Flag In The Land Of The Rising Sun

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(Excerpted from FLAG Matters, the quarterly magazine of FLAG Telecom)

Japan has a population of around 127 million and covers an area of roughly 378,000 square kilometers, which is approximately the size of California in the USA. The Japanese commonly refer to their country as Nihon or Nippon. These names translate to mean The Source of the Sun or the Land of the Rising Sun. The reason why there are two different names is that the Japanese still use Chinese-origin characters, and there are two different pronunciations for two characters meaning Japan; one is Nihon and the other is Nippon.

Another example is Toyota, the name of an automobile manufacturer. The founding family named the company Toyoda and they use the same characters. Toyo means rich and ta and da both mean field.

The islands of Japan are actually the exposed tops of huge undersea ridges that rise up, out of the Pacific Ocean. Because of this, more than 70 per cent of the land is rugged mountains and hills. Japan is home to 10 per cent of the world's active volcanoes and has about three minor earthquakes every day of the year.

Japan is one of the most expensive countries in the world to buy fruits; it is the world's largest per capita consumer of seafood, and is the largest consumer of tropical rainforest timber.

The telecom market in Japan is highly competitive.

Government controlled carriers NTT and KDDI operated in Japan until 1985 when a new law was enacted to enable competition and facilitate foreign investment. Since then, many carriers have emerged, categorized under Japanese law as follows:

Type 1 carriers, which are 'facilities based' and

Type 2 carriers, which are 'non facilities based' and include ISPs.

There are 413 listed Type 1 carriers and 10,904 Type 2 carriers in Japan. According to government statistics, the telecom business within Japan is worth 19,140 billion Yen (approximately £96 bn). The most significant growth is driven by mobile and Internet / Broadband usage.

FLAG has seven permanent employees in Japan, with two outsourced support staff. The team focuses on delivering international solutions to/from Japan, and on sales t o k e y Internet and c a r r i e r accounts in J a p a n .

Despite heavy competition (with more than a dozen suppliers attempting to win every deal), the team has now acquired a solid customer base, including companies such as NTT, KDDI, Nexion and Yahoo Japan. With the market in upturn mode and a strong team in place, the future looks sunny for FLAG in Japan.