Toshiya Jitsuzumi

Impact of telecommuting on mass transit congestion: the Tokyo case

Telecommuting, a dispersed style of commuting enabled by developments in info-communication technology, is becoming increasingly popular among Japanese white-collar employees. According to our estimates, 9-14 million employees will telecommute by 2010, which will result in a 6.9-10.9% reduction in congestion in Tokyo, Japan. Associated cost savings are equivalent to 7.9-26.4% of annual spending on public transportation. Due to the considerable size of these positive external effects, some degree of policy support will be necessary to achieve a socially optimal level of penetration by telecommuting.

ICTs and sustainability: The managerial and environmental impact in Japan

There are manifold causal linkages between information and communications technologies (ICTs) and social sustainability. In this article, these linkages are classified into three areas: direct improvement of corporate productivity, changed behaviour of people/organizations, and improved decision‐making capabilities within society. A framework is proposed to analyse the first two of these three linkages, together with the results of a questionnaire survey. These point to a continuous growth trend in Japanese ICT investment with sectoral variations, and statistically significant evidence of ICTs’ contributions to corporate operations and environmental issues.

Ten Years of Japan's Net Neutrality Policy: A Review of the Past and Recommendations for the Future

Because broadband is widely believed to be a precondition for economic prosperity and social progress, many governments are working hard for the speedy realization of a broadband society. However, increasing penetration of broadband Internet and higher resolution digital content have resulted in network capacity constraints to become readily apparent; hence, network congestion is now an everyday problem for ordinary users in developed as well as developing nations. Since this situation allows dominant Internet service providers (ISPs) to behave anti-competitively in the market, it cannot be assumed that the market dynamism can always come up with strategies for mitigating the capacity constraints efficiently and fairly, or “neutrally,” without proper governmental interventions.For nearly a decade, the above situation has been widely discussed by telecom regulators under the name of “net neutrality,” which (in its most basic form) requires “equal” treatment for all Internet traffic. Due to the differences in the broadband ecosystem and existing regulatory framework of each country, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Indeed, the policy treatments that are actually adopted vary among nations. For example, in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has to micromanage the behavior of ISPs due to a lack of competitiveness in the market. On the contrary, in Japan, the telecom authority, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), concluded in 2007 that no special policy treatments are needed because the fixed ISP market seems to be sufficiently competitive.Since then, almost ten years have passed. In a broadband ecosystem with a timeline measured by dog years, a period of 10 years is too long for the same policy treatments to remain efficient. The MIC’s data show that ordinary users mostly use their mobile phones to access the Internet, in which case the market is virtually oligopolized by three big career ISPs. In addition, since NTT East and NTT West started providing wholesale fiber-optic services in 2015, these mobile giants have accelerated bundling their services with fixed broadband in order to control the overall Internet experience of end users. One of them is even bundling its mobile broadband services with selected content/applications. These changes require the MIC to reconsider its approach to net neutrality.In this study, the author reviews the changing market conditions in Japan since 2006 and evaluates two possible policy sets for the MIC: one is a structural set that aims to restore the competitive market, and the other is a behavioral one to control the behavior of the big players. Considering its unsuccessful track record of promoting mobile broadband competition, the author believes that the MIC should swiftly adopt a United States-like behavioral approach coupled with a European Union-like minimum quality of service (QoS) requirement in order to deal with the broadband ecosystem of 2016.

Measuring DEA efficiency in cable television network facilities: what are appropriate criteria for determining the amounts of governmental subsidies?

Abstract Recent technological developments have transformed the cable television industry (CATV) from a simple re-transmitter of terrestrial broadcasting to a provider of a broader-band information infrastructure. With cable operators facing an undesirable market situation while operating a fiber optics network vital to the creation of an information-based society within Japan, the Japanese Government has introduced several supportive measures for the industry. Such governmental intervention should desirably be justified not only from a political viewpoint but also from an economic one; otherwise such measures may distort economic efficiency. In this article, using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the authors identify the deficiencies of an accounting-based intervention scheme and propose an alternative framework with no disincentive side effects.

Prerequisites for a Network Neutrality Solution : Lessons from an Empirical Analysis of the Japanese Broadband Market

From an economic viewpoint, the author considers it to be appropriate to interpret the network neutrality problem as a combination of a congestion problem caused by limited network capacity and an anticompetitive problem caused by the dominance of major Internet service providers (ISPs). In Japan, where asymmetric regulation on the incumbent Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation seems to have successfully maintained competitiveness in the retail ISP market, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has focused on fighting network congestion by introducing a “coregulation”-like framework. The validity of this approach is heavily dependent on two prerequisites: (a) effective competition in the broadband ISP market and (b) sufficient user literacy on network quality. As for the first condition, given the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the MIC has stated that the current ISP market in Japan has no immediate anticompetitive threat. However, if switching costs for broadband users are very large, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index cannot reflect the real competitive level. In this study, switching costs based on a model-based estimation as well as a questionnairebased estimation are calculated. This study concludes that the Japanese broadband ISP market may not be as competitive as it looks, suggesting that the MIC has reasons to reconsider its current policy on network neutrality. Although the discussion in this paper is based on Japanese empirical data, it can apply to other nations that have a similar structure in the broadband ecosystem as that of Japan and where significant market power regulations on incumbent network operators represent the major tool to attain competitiveness in the ISP market.