Japan hopes to be king of the IT castle

The state-run programme called 'eJapan' consists of a comprehensive range of measures.

Fusaki Matsui, director of the newly founded Ministry for Post and Telecommunications, said Japan needs better infrastructure to take advantage of opportunities offered by the internet.

Central to the programme is a high-speed fibre-optic network, which will offer inexpensive access to ten million households by as early as next year. According to government plans, in the year 2005, 30 million Japanese households will have 'always-on' internet access.

To the same timescale, Matsui, in a lecture in Munich, promised the replacement of the current internet transmission protocol TCP/IP with the more highly developed protocol specification IPv6. This standard will be valid for all internet-supported environments and equipment.

The Japanese telecomms industry is also concentrating its efforts on the development of fourth generation mobile communications, which will replace the current standard iMode. Mobile communications operator NTT DoCoMo has already announced the launch of the first UMTS services for the autumn.

By Andreas Beuthner, reporter, http://www.silicon.de