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The Internet in Japan:

   Catalyst for Change?

International Business Research (formerly Cyberworks Japan) completed, with Dewey Ballantine, LLP, The Internet in Japan: Catalyst for Change?, a 250-page study of the interplay between the business factors and regulatory regime shaping online commerce in Japan in 2001.

Study highlitghts:

• Implications of Mobile Access. How did the dominant cellular provider become the number one ISP in Japan in just eighteen months, demonstrating the unusual twists which growth in Japan’s Internet economy have taken as a result of regulatory policy and the old economy structure? How is Japan leading global efforts toward mobile Internet access and forging international alliances to accelerate its lead in next-generation mobile access?
  
  
• Future of Broadband in Japan. Japan’s broadband environment is likely to be more heavily weighted toward non-pc "information appliances" and toward B-ISDN as a leading broadband distribution technology. It is likely to involve a quicker adoption of mobile broadband access and to continue to feature NTT as the dominant player in the broadband distribution services market. It is conceivable that broadband Internet access may be available to a higher percentage of the Japanese population than of the US population by 2005, especially if the Telecommunications-Broadcast Compatability Promotion Law is passed by the Diet this Spring.
  
  
• Case Studies of Distribution. "For scores of Japanese middlemen . . . the Internet industry threatens the end of an era," wrote the Financial Times last year. Through case studies of convenience stores, and online travel, books, and autos, the study explores whether the complex structures emerging in Japan’s online distribution industry are meeting Western expectations that the Internet be the open, efficient, and culturally neutral distribution channel foreign companies seek.
  
  
• Regulatory Changes to Boost Online Activity in 2001. Specific positive steps are being taken by the Japanese government to lift impediments that have restrained Internet growth in the past. Amendments to some fifty laws facilitating online commerce will take effect through the recently passed E-Notification Law and consumer confidence may be given a boost through the introduction to the Diet in Spring 2001 of the Ecommerce Contracts and Basic Privacy laws, among over a dozen other laws. If the new legislation is implemented in the spirit of "getting it right" with respect to regulation of e-commerce, significantly increased online commercial activity might be anticipated in Japan in 2001 as a result.