Re: [NTLK] [OT] The Myth of Japanese phones

From: BK (bk_newtontalk_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jan 08 2002 - 17:59:40 EST


On Wednesday, January 9, 2002, at 05:30 , Oliver Brose wrote:

Re: UMTS and cellular in Japan

> My point about this was: You can have it all, it is there. No matter how
> stupid or useless, you can have it if you want it. Something that seems
> pointless to me may be a fascinating way of selfexpression to somebody
> else.

And my point is that in Japan you have got less choice than in Europe
unless you are a 15 year old Japanese teenager, because no company
really caters for ordinary folks anymore.

> 3G may be over the top if you have 128kbps already, but that's
> something to
> dream of here.

Well, PHS is probably what 3G should have been.

Europe could have had PHS. The Japanese were asking for a trial in
Germany and the Germans promised to grant a license if a) the Japanese
would build their European PHS phone factory in Germany and b) it would
be interoperable with GSM.

So the Japanese built a GSM/PHS dual mode handset and promised to build
a factory near Heidelberg (???) All looked ready set go, but then the
Japanese Ministry of Post and Telecommunications granted a CDMA license
to IDO (now KDDI) because they couldn't find enough space in the GSM
band (GSM was preferred but the Japanese bands are in such a fragmented
mess that it wasn't viable) and that pissed of the Europeans and they
said "Now you can forget about PHS in Europe".

That was a real pitty. PHS is far more economically than 3G and delivers
almost the same bandwidth and voice quality is actually better than 3G.
A public PHS base station costs about 1000 USD and serves a radius of
about 500m, a 3G base costs in the order of hundred times more and in
city centres it wouldn't serve a much greater area.

> Here, we can have a lot of studpid and useless things as well, but at a
> much
> lower level of technology. So it's not only stupid and useless, but also
> slow and boring.

> BK, I have to excuse myself, as I here (and ** also) fell for a
> stereotype
> about Japan created by European media while feeling very sure about
> knowing
> that other stereotypes about Japan are just not true, can't be true in
> the
> order of "all the Japanese...", as nothing can, most times.

Well I am talking about trends.

> So, you're saing that being different and special is a bad thing,
> arrogant?
> Or do you mean that being different and special in an arrogant way is a
> bad
> thing? ... Let me get this straight ;)
>
> I myself dare to be different, because I am.
> I feel great about it.
> Being different does not make me a better person, though.
> Neither does it degrade others, who may be just as special, or like to
> be
> absorbed by the mass.

Well it is somewhat difficult to describe, but there is some
stubbornness about the Japanese way. They are unhappy about their
economy being in shambles and they have their own bright people who tell
them what has got to be done about it, then also foreigners who are
respected here tell them pretty much the same, but they find it too
bothersome to clean up the mess and instead prefer to wait until they
wake up and it was all a bad dream because they used to be the economic
miracle and therefore it couldn't possibly be that they have to eat
humble pie. And should there really be something wrong then it is all
the fault of foreigners anyway.

I personally think Japan is finished and I have given up hope that they
will recover. In my book they would need to run into some real deep doom
before they get their act together, something like a civil war, meteor
crashing into Honshu and devastating the whole country or something of
that kind of magnitude. That would get them going and they'd be on top
in no time. But as that is rather unlikely, they will just continue to
drift along. Pitty really. It used to be a great place.

> Thank you for some insights!

welcome

rgds
bk


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