October 27, 2006 the Finland-Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference was held in Tokyo.
Tero Ojanpera, Exec VP and CTO of NOKIA, gave an overview of NOKIA’s vision of communications, other speakers and panelists included Juho Lipsanen, Finland CEO of TeliaSonera, KDDI Chairman Murakami.
The day before I briefed and had a long discussion with the top management team of TeliaSonera-Finland.
Nokia CTO Tero Ojanpera talking at the Finland Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference
Panel discussion with TeliaSonera CEO Juho Lipsanen and KDDI-Chairman Murakami.
Today (March 23, 2006) I was invited to brief the Technology Attaches of the Embassies of the 25 European Union countries here in Tokyo about Japan’s telecommunications sector (both fixed net and wireless) in a one hour presentation + discussion. I had offered several alternative topics and the conference of EU Technology Attaches selected the most provocative title I had offered: “Why Japan is several years ahead of Europe in telecommunications and what Europe can do to catch up”
Vodafone KK’s Chairman and former NTT-DoCoMo Vice-President Tsuda, who had worked 34 years at NTT and DoCoMo (and who resigned from his Vodafone-Japan CEO position a few weeks after being head-hunted), said in a recent interview with Bloomberg that “Japan is way ahead in 3G”. – therefore, although this title is clearly provocative, it’s clearly worthwhile examining this question. With the sale of Vodafone KK to SoftBank last week, the timing of this briefing was particularly interesting. My presentation discussed the following questions:
Is Japan ahead of Europe in Telecommunications and fixed as well as wireless broadband?
Why?
What is the impact?
Is this important?
What Europe can do to catch up
EU awards project contract to Eurotechnology Japan KK to document the status of fixed and wireless broad band communications in EU vs Japan
As a consequence of this presentation the EU awards project contract to Eurotechnology Japan KK to document the status of fixed and wireless broad band communications in EU vs Japan, and to prepare recommendations for the EU to learn from Japan, and accelerate progress in Europe.
