The Japan communications ministry said Monday it will put into practical use this fall the ultra wideband wireless system that enables indoor data transmission at five times the speed of the fiber-optic communication system. With a transmission speed of up to 500 megabits per second, the system will allow the recording of more than two high-definition television programs at the same time, the ministry said.
Via on What Japan Thinks, japan.internet.com and JR Tokai Express Research recently conducted a survey to find out about “meiwaku” mail (spam). They interviewed 330 mobile-phone owners, 60 percent male, from all around the country by means of an internet-based survey. 19.9 percent of respondents received at least 1 spam mail per day.
A project team formed by NHK and five major commercial broadcasters in Tokyo have decided that a 600-meter tower for terrestrial digital television broadcasting [.jpg] will be built in the Sumida-Taito area of the capital according to an article in the Yomiuri Shimbun. The new tower, dubbed Tokyo Tower 2 [formally named Sky Tree], is scheduled for completion at the end of 2010 and will be the worlds largest telecom tower, surpassing CN Tower in Toronto, currently the tallest at 553 meters. Video Here
Japan’s mobile-phone shipments are forecast to rise this year, after gaining for the first time in three quarters in the period ended December, researcher IDC said. For all of 2005, shipments rose 0.5 percent to 44.32 million units. Sales of 3G handsets in the fourth quarter helped offset declines in the previous two quarters, fourth-quarter mobile-phone shipments rose 7.1 percent to 11.6 million units from a year earlier, IDC said.
Sherelog is a system that fetches data from JR’s Suica RFID train pass and visualizes personal train-ride records on a large public map (or Google Map). Koutaro Hashimoto, Yasuhiro Suzuki, Toshio Iwai, Michitaka Hirose showed this system at the Japan Media Arts Festival earlier this month. The developers’ intentions seem to be (1) to support people to remember their personal travel histories and reflect upon them and (2) to create unique opportunities for communications by making it extremely easy to share personal travel histories.
In 2005, Airspan Networks signed agreements with Yozan Inc. to deploy a Tokyo-wide WiMAX network, valued at $16.7 million, to deliver high speed IP connectivity capable of a wide array of data service offerings. The companies has now announced a further $26 million expansion to their contract, bringing its value to more than $42 million. Airspan expects to deliver between $5 million and $8 million of the total in the first quarter of 2006, with the balance by July.
We have noticed plenty of outdoor ads for their BitStand brand here lately — Eds
