Broadband gets boost / Govt wants every home connected to fiber optic network by '15

Hajime Furukawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

SYDNEY--The government wants every household in Japan to have ultrahigh-speed broadband access by 2015 through fiber optic networks, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi said Monday in Sydney.

The government will submit bills to the ordinary Diet session next year to ensure broadband access is available across the nation--an ambitious goal that could hasten the demise of regular fixed-line telephones.

As part of the plan, the government will require Internet protocol (IP) telephone operators to provide a "universal service"--under which the same level of service must be available to all users regardless of their location--just like fixed-phone operators have to.

The government plans to have the information communication council, an advisory body to Haraguchi, discuss the matter Tuesday.

The council also will discuss user fees for maintaining IP phone services.

NTT plans to replace the copper-wire lines that connect landline telephones with optic fiber. The ministry will ask the company to submit by the end of August a plan outlining when the switch will be completed.

If IP phones become more widely used due to growth in the optic fiber network, fixed-line phone services likely will be terminated.

Bell tolls for fixed phones

By Yoshihisa Mizukami

Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

The demise of regular landline telephones in Japan now appears to be a matter of when, not if.

Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi has spoken of the government's plan to hasten the spread of ultrahigh-speed broadband to every household, a move that would accelerate the shift from regular phones to Internet protocol phones.

To help achieve this goal, IP phone service operators will be asked to provide universal services--as regular fixed-line operators are now--through a high-speed fiber-optic network.

All eyes will be on the deadline to terminate fixed-phone services, which NTT Corp. plans to announce by the end of August.

The number of contracted fixed-line telephones peaked at more than 60 million, but had fallen to 43.34 million at the end of the last fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the number of subscribers to IP phones that use fiber optic networks quadrupled in the six years to fiscal 2009 to 22.83 million. IP phones seem destined to supplant normal telephones in the near future.

If it is decided that the fixed-phone network service will be terminated and fiber-optic IP phones provided cheaply and universally, IP phones could become widespread in a stroke.

NTT is obligated to provide universal fixed-phone services because it has held a monopoly on the network since it was Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation.

However, the number of fixed-phone subscribers has been falling, and maintaining the aging network is rather costly.

Opting only for a fiber-optic network would spare NTT from having to pour its resources into the upkeep of two networks.

However, NTT President Satoshi Miura has so far avoided giving any definite time frame for terminating the fixed-phone network. "We'll consider this when the number of subscribers has dropped to a certain level," Miura said.

NTT has invested more than 2 trillion yen in the optic network since the corporation was privatized in 1985. It is reluctant to have to provide universal service for fiber-optic IP phones.

If NTT and the communications ministry are unable to find a compromise, calls to spin off the network from NTT--which holds a dominant share in it--likely will grow.