The Japanese transport ministry has announced plans to start lending to personal digital assistants (PDAs) with travel information and translation services to foreign visitors.
The pilot program is part of a government drive to find ways to make Japan more attractive to foreign tourists, who are often put off by the language barrier and the country’s high prices. The mobile units with Chinese, Korean and English software will be lent to selected tourists who land at Narita Airport near Tokyo from February through March to test the response.
Japan has set the goal of nearly doubling the number of foreign tourists to 10 million in 2010 from 5.73 million in 2003.
Kansai Science City is one of the more interesting projects in Japan. It aims to strengthen the cooperative works of industry, academics, and the government by promoting international, interdisciplinary and cross-industrial exchange and transaction in culture, science and technology with the participation of general public.
Tsukuba Science City, with dozens of Research and Educational Institutes also has a modern urban landscape. The city is divided into two population areas: the Research and Education District and the Surrounding Suburban District. The projected population for Tsukuba is 220,000, with 100,000 in the Research and Education District and 120,000 in the Surrounding Suburban District.
Soon, cities such as these, and similar developments in Korea and other Asian countries may be transformed with broadband clouds.
Korea’s solution: WiBro Broadband Wireless
Korea’s WiBro was successfully tested in Korea last month.
WiBro, using 2.3GHz spectrum, allows people on the move to remain connected to the Internet at the speed of current landline broadband, up to 1 Mbps. Samsung Electronics aims to make WiBro available in a PC card this year (2005) with the full commercialization of WiBro in 2006.
Korea Telecom has set up approximately 15,000 WiFi access points across the nation, which enable people to connect to the Internet at a maximum speed of 11Mbps. According to the Korea Information Strategy Development Institute (KISDI), the Korean WiBro service is forecast to attract as many as 9.3 million subscribers by 2011.
WiBro was first conceived as a Korean technology standard called HPi (for high-speed portable Internet). However, as a Korean standard rivaling WiMAX s 802.16e, it was a proprietary standard. As a result, Korea brought an end to HPi earlier this year, agreeing to use the 802.16e standard for WiBro. It appears WiBro was adapted from an early version of 802.16e and further developed domestically until the Koreans were pressured to continue their work under the auspices of the IEEE.
Korea plans to issue three licenses for WiBro service in February 2005, probably to Korea Telecom (KT Corporation), SK Telecom and Hanaro Telecom. KT and SK Telecom, both own 3G networks.
WiBro will offer an aggregate data throughput of 30-50Mbps - comparable to what Wi-Fi offers today - but does not have the limitations of the latter. One will be able to access the WiBro network, in which a base station covers 1-5km, not only at cafes or shopping malls but just about everywhere.
Pyramid Research, says there is a risk of WiBro cannibalizing cellualar data services, such as WLAN and mobile-based services like EV-DO and W-CDMA.
KT was established as a state fixed-line monopoly in 1981. Upon the repeal of the Korea Telecom Act in 1997, KT became a government invested-institution and became a private, independent company in 2002, changing its name to the current KT Corp.
Some two years after privatization, KT is now a diversified fixed-line, mobile and Web-based data communications company. Hanarotelecom recently acquired Thrunet, Korea’s third-largest broadband operator for more than 34 percent of the local broadband market. But the fixed-line customer pool has plateaued around 22.9 million while mobile-phone subscribers now exceed 36 million. The largest mobile-phone carrier in Korea is SK Telecom. LG Telecom, the smallest of South Korea’s three mobile phone operators, lost subscribers to SK Telecom and KTF in the government-backed number portability program.
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