Joe User Visits the Internet in Japan (an Everyman's view of the Ongoing Internet War)

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

From: fossoy () tanuki twics co jp
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1993 23:18:37 JST
To: mech () eff org
Message-ID: <00976A16.B0D3BBC0.7147 () tanuki twics co jp>
Subject: Summary




Dear Sir:


So here is a summary of the Internet War to date. Not much, but an attempt to
interpret and summarize. I can't post to the Usenet just yet, do you
suppose you could dump it into [comp.org..eff.talk] for me?   Onegai Shimasu


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Joe User Visits the Internet in Japan
(an Everyman's view of the Ongoing Internet War)


        O.K., I dialed up and joined a local Internet provider, nothing
special - happens every minute in some places, but I live in Tokyo. The
service I joined, TWICS, a small firm owned by a nonprofit educational group,
is the *first* public access Internet provider in Japan. They leased a line
from InterCom International K.K. (IIKK), which is a foreign-owned company. A
Japanese company, IIJ, has been trying unsuccessfully for a year to get a
license to provide the sort of commercial service that IIKK already does.
TWICS was IIKK's first customer. This brings TWICS into the line of fire of a
petty, but well-connected rival. That's one front of the Internet War as I see
it.


        The other front is the research network in Japan, JUNet. Internet in
Japan lags behind the States, some people estimate by as much as ten years. It
is still mostly a big business and academic playground. The Ministries are
fighting and generally getting in the way. The Ministry of Post and Telecom
(MPT) and the Ministry of Education (MEdu) are the major players, as well as
MITI (an industrial policy ministry). MPT is responsible for having denied an
international standard and also tried to establish their own system standards.
MEdu is trying to establish strictly academic networks instead of supporting
existing Internet projects. MEdu also wants to restrict access to "their"
networks to academic use only. Generally, all this intervention only uses tax
money to support closed projects, which only make politicians and lobbyists
rich. Ho hum, nothing new in Japan - or most places. Anyway that is the second
front, the academic/ministry bozos. Don't forget in Japan you have an old-boys
network based on money and school connections. Executive X at the company
calls up Section Chief Y at the ministry or Professor Z at the university and
the foriegn rival gets squeezed.


        In the Summer of 1992 JUNet and u-tokyo.ac.jp decided that they would
disconnect all non-academic sites. TWICS still gets its BITNET and domestic
mail through JUNet, but figured by the time it all came down it would have a
work-around in place. TWICS had paid for 1993, and the original schedule
called for all commercial users to be off by February 1994. Around the middle
of November JUNet unilaterally cut TWICS off from domestic mail and BITNET
mail from around the world. They knew TWICS was in the process of moving to a
commercial system, and when they called TWICS to tell them about the cut off
JUNet mentioned IIJ. They knew exactly what was happening, and there was no
cause for TWICS to be cut off, it was leaving on schedule anyway. No one else
was shut off at that time, only IIKK's first customer.


        As an executive at IIKK put it TWICS was victimized "by a
particularily disgusting action from the old-boys network in Japan, starting
at JUNet, and going up from there". TWICS' domestic mail and BITNET was
finally restored, but it took a long time to get past the people who caused
the problem. Again the IIKK executive: "No one lifted a finger to help us (and
TWICS) out until a reporter with a major international newspaper called the
powers that be asking about the attack on TWICS. Only then did people move.
Phone calls, faxes, e-mail all were ignored until that happened, then action
was fast and furious." He believes somebody at IIJ has influence with JUNet
or MEdu.


        It gets stranger yet. "Soon after Twics complained [about the e-mail
cutoff], it received an intimidating phone call from a man claiming to be from
the university's computer center, Burress said. "Stop doing business in Japan!
Shut down immediately!" the caller shouted at a Twics staffer." This was
lifted (fair use) from Thomas P. O'Toole's article on TWICS in the _Nikei
Weekly_, based in part on an interview with TWICS SysOp Tim Burress. Tokyo
University (Todai) comes into the act at several points. Sitting under a
banner reading something like "Commercial Internet in Japan" at the AT&T/IIKK
Symposium, Professor Haruisa Ishihda of Todai named only IIJ and AT&T SPIN as
the commercial Internet providers, while carefully avoiding any mention of
IIKK in his charts and in his lecture. Mr. Jun Murai, refered to locally as
the Godfather of the Internet, had to forcefully mention IIJ's lack of a
license and InterCon International as well. Many were shocked that Todai, with
its incredible reputation, would be involved in this sort of misinformation
campaign. Maybe he did not know what he was talking about, in which case he is
an "expert" who did not know the names of the two authorized companies. Most
here think there is something highly suspicious going on.


        From the outside looking in it seems really strange. Its almost a
textbook example of corporate/bureaucratic collusion in Japan. Be glad you are
were you are, cyberspace does have borders.


Steven Fossoy
am578 () freenet hsc colorado edu


further reading:


_Asian Wall Street Journal_, Nov. 18, page 1 (great quote from Dr. Inose).


_New York Times_, Nov. 21.


_Nikkei Weekly_, Nov. 29.


_Wired_, Nov '93 issue, Rants and Raves section, page 18, top left, from Kenji
Rikitake.


P.S. I heard a rumour that IIJ will get their licence soon. Same rumour has
been around for 10 months. Allegedly, there is a standard for financial
background that IIJ just cannot meet. Also, Gordon Cook, Internet consultant,
recently had a six hour meeting with NTT (Japan's Ma Bell) to discuuss how
far behind Japan is in telecommunications. There is a lot of interest in the
Internet in Japan right now, mostly from MPT and MITI. It is mostly focused
on *inhibiting* the growth of the Internet in Japan.




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Sincerely,


Steven Fossoy
Kenroku Heim #105
5-2-12 Kurihara
Niiza-shi, Saitama-ken  352
JAPAN


tel: 81+ 424-25-0579
fax: 81+ 424-25-0262
e-mail: FOSSOY () TANUKI TWICS CO JP