USTR Critical Of Japanese TD-CDMA Licensing

News for nerds writes "Yahoo Asia reports that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said in its annual report that the Japanese government has so far refused to issue experimental licenses to certain U.S. companies to test the new TD-CDMA technology. It attacks China and S. Korea along the line. The funny thing is, according to Impress Internet Watch, the Japanese government states that no U.S. companies had actually applied for the license so far. ITmedia also reports the Japanese government didn't deny foreign application, while criticizing the government for too narrow bandwidth of TD-CDMA that can be monopolized easily. Is this the precursor of another wave of pressure onto technology from Japan?"

Comments

Lawrence Lessig and spectrum regulation

[Raindance]

Ok.

Lawrence Lessig has quite a convincing argument for 'freeing' spectrum- in short (and not giving it the justice it deserves- he says it better in 'The Future of Ideas'), a lack of regulation (both legal and 'structural' regulation- i.e. the internet isn't structurally regulated whereas the phone system is, being centrally regulated) worked absolute wonders for the Internet. If the internet wasn't end-to-end and open, it'd be a shadow of what it is now.

So, basically, he believes that the spectrum is a medium which could be much like the internet, given protocols and standards that allowed things to connect using it.

As something somewhat like the internet would be much more useful than something like the phone system in the long run, I think the real news here, rather than there being a US-Japan spectrum spat, is that countries are squabbling over how to miserly regulate the spectrum in the first place.

RD

Re:Have we been here before?

[Biotech9]

I seem to recall a similar debate over the U.S.'s attempt to push the use of CDMA at the expense of of GSM in Iraq.

Perhaps, but that was then (when we all imagined a groovy peaceful Iraq starting a domino effect of democratisation across the Arab world), And this is now, when I can't see the mobile phone market in Iraq being very relevant for the next few years.

This is more akin to how the US has berated china over keeping its currency artifically low against the Dollar, while doing the same thing to Europe.

Or the Way the US has slammed the EU's fine against Microsoft as the 'opening shot of a trade war', While ignoring its own illegal subsidies and tariffs which have been in place for years.

The saying was, 'war is an extension of politics by other means', Today it has an addition of... " And, Politics is an extension of economics by other means".

Re:Have we been here before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, US cannot let the dollar to get too weak or the oil exporting countries will switch over to using Euro instead of the US dollar.

Now that would mean serious problems for the US economy. Serious enough to start a war, in fact.

US = Unbelievably Stupid

[Slashamatic]

Japan leads the world in the use of GSM Phase 3 technology. The funny thing is that GSM phase 3 uses CDMA as the air interface. As I mentioned earlier, the air interface is only a minor part of the GSM spec. A GSM phase 3 handset can still be used in "reverse compatability mode" roaming onto a GSM Phase 2 system.

What the US is pushing is a CDMA system that doesn't communicate with anything else, which is being pushed by Qualcomm (and their senators). CDMA should provide a much better overall quality and spectrum of possible services, unfortunately in the US it doesn't. This is becase the air spec is just a small part of it.

The fun thing is that GSM Phase 3 means that some Qualcomm poatents must be licensed so they are still being paid for the technology.