more on Setting Fire To Japan's Cell-Phone Market

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ted Dolotta <Ted () Dolotta ORG>
Date: October 30, 2004 6:27:08 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] Setting Fire To Japan's Cell-Phone Market
Reply-To: Ted () Dolotta ORG

Having worked very, very closely with Masa Son for over ten years, I
can assure you that this is classic Son:  he has pulled off a number of
such stunts to force change in Japan:  he decided to essentially *give*
stock to all his employees in the early 1990's, because stock options
were illegal in Japan ("Insider trading," said the government ...);
they no longer are.  And the way he forced the government to give him
Japanese citizenship (he was born in Japan, but as a Korean national)
*without* him having to change his last name to an "acceptable"
Japanese surname -- which was the rule in Japan -- is an absolute 
classic,
but perhaps too long a story for IP.  Son is a real piece of work.

That said, the Business Week article referenced below, and even more
so, the companion interview (Online Extra:  Why Son is "Banging the
Table") have been, IMHO, "punched" up a bit:  the tone of the two
pieces is a bit over the top, and although his English is very good
(he has a B.S. from UC Berkeley), when I worked with him, Son's
vocabulary did not include words such as  "ubiquitous" and
"seamlessly" ...

Ted Dolotta

P.S.  And in the interim, SOFTBANK has 4.5 million customers who get
        20+Mb/3Mb ADSL, and all the VoIP they can eat, for some $35/month.
        NTT & KDDI have been forced to drop their rates, and the users
        benefit.  And I'm eating my heart out here in the old US of A ...

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: IKEDA Nobuo <ikedanob () db3 so-net ne jp>
> Date: October 29, 2004 9:20:58 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: ikedanob () db3 so-net ne jp
> Subject: Setting Fire To Japan's Cell-Phone Market
>
> Three years ago, Masayoshi Son walked into Japan's communications
> ministry and threatened to set himself on fire. A stunt of course, but
> he was deadly serious about one thing: He felt regulators were dragging
> their feet in forcing Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT 
> ),
> the former monopoly operator, to fulfill its legal obligation to 
> connect
> residential customers to the broadband lines of Yahoo! BB, a mainstay 
> of
> Son's Softbank Corp.
>
> Now, Son hopes to transform Japan's cellular market. His plan is to
> offer his broadband customers -- most of whom also subscribe to
> supercheap Internet telephony -- package deals that include mobile
> service, the Internet, and voice calling. That, he says, would help cut
> rates for Japanese mobile users, who pay an average of $65 monthly. "I
> can guarantee that cell-phone prices will be lower if we come in," says
> Son, Softbank's president.
>
> The reshuffling has Son hot under the collar again, but this time he's
> not threatening self-immolation. Instead, on Oct. 13 he filed a lawsuit
> against the ministry, calling for the spectrum reallocation to be
> stopped. "I'm getting smarter," Son says. "It's still business suicide,
> but it's better than physically killing myself." Specifically, Son 
> wants
> the ministry to divide the spectrum into three chunks, giving equal
> pieces to a newcomer -- which Son hopes will be Softbank -- and to KDDI
> and DoCoMo. His argument: Both carriers are already sitting on unused
> spectrum, so why shouldn't they face more competition?
>
> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_44/b3906073.htm
>
> While you have too many lawsuits between the FCC and operators, we have
> too few suits in Japan. This is the first case that any company sues 
> the
> government over spectrum allocation in Japan's history.
>
> --
> Ikeda, Nobuo
> GLOCOM, Japan
>
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