White Spaces in Japan

Hajime Yamada and I posted a public comment to the MIC in Japan that the 770-806 MHz band for field pickup (FPU) is wasted. Since most FPUs are now using 5.8GHz band and higher, 800 MHz band is used only for marathon broadcasting, less than twenty times per year.

So we commented that the MIC should disclose the data of usage of 800 MHz band so as to open the unused spectrum for secondary uses. It's much easier than American white spaces, because the programs of marathon are planned yearly. The MIC replied that it is difficult to open the band without disclosing the data.

They are reluctant to disclose the data because the usage rate would be less than 1/1,000,000,000. However, if the MIC auctioned the wasted spectrum, they could get $4.5 billion. It's their good chance to compensate the costly DTV transition.

Japan's Adventure into DTV

Japan's MIC (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) admitted that it would not be possible to migrate all the analog TV to digital until July 2011, the deadline to stop the analog broadcasting. The Minister, Mr. Masuda, said that the MIC would request the budget more than 200 billion yen ($20 billion) to distribute digital tuners to a million households on welfare and other low-income families.

The Ministry of Finance would not easily permit such ad hoc subsidy to TV audience. Moreover, it would hardly help the problem because there are more than 100 million analog TVs in Japan now. If most of these TVs are not supported, as much as 50 million TVs might be scrapped as huge buildup of wastes. However, if MIC want to subsidize all the household as the FCC did, it would cost more than $50 billion.

Last month the Cabinet of the Prime Minister proposed the Action Plan for the Digital Transition. But the biggest problem is how to finance the huge budget. As the MIC didn't auctioned spectrum, they have little budget. So I proposed the "White Space Auction" to open the unused spectrum for new entrants.

We are going to have a symposium on July 25, the day three years before the "black out" of analog broadcasting. This would be a chance for the great transition from legacy TV to the new world of broadband Web.

Sweden's "B-CAS" Is Admitted Illegal

The European Commission said it has withdrawn its legal case against Sweden at the EU's highest court after the Scandinavian country amended its laws to abolish a licensing system that gave the partly state-owned company Boxer the exclusive right to handle certain digital terrestrial broadcasting services.

The commission referred Sweden to the European Court of Justice in October 2006. Under EU laws from 2002, member states had to abolish all exclusive rights for the provision of electronic communications services, including the encryption of broadcasting programmes, by July 2003.