= A Serial Introduction Part 3=Winners of ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards 2017
In May every year, The ITU Association of Japan (ITU-AJ) proudly presents ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards to people who have madeoutstanding contributions in the field of international standardization and have helped in the ongoing development of ICT.
These Awards are also an embodiment of our sincere desire to encourage further contributions from these individuals in the future.
If you happen to run into these winners at another meeting in the future, please say hello to them.
But first, as part of the introductory series of Award Winners, allow us to introduce some of those remarkable winners.

Yoshihiro Nakayama

KDDI Foundation
http://www.kddi-foundation.or.jp/english/

Fields of activity: ICT projects in rural area

A Desire to Contribute to Society in Rural Area through ICT
I am very honored to receive the ITU-AJ Encouragement
Award. Since engaging in international cooperation activities, I havebeen involved in projects in various countries including Vietnam,Mongolia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Thailand. I would like toexpress my deepest appreciation to my colleagues in Japan andoverseas for their support in these projects.
I have greatly enjoyed traveling to different parts of Asia andmeeting all sorts of people from different cultures. I find it very
rewarding being able to use my ICT skills to improve the lives ofothers.
In a project in Mongolia in 2015, we set up a parabolic antenna tobring Internet access to a village called Khalkhgol along the border ofthe eastern steppe area, about 1,000 kilometers away from the capital
Ulaanbaatar. We also connected the village hall, school and hospital
by Wi-Fi. As a result, the local children are now able to access online
teaching materials. It takes two whole days to drive from Ulaanbaatar
to Khalkhgol. After the installation work, there was an opening

Yoshikazu Narikiyo

ceremony where it was possible to see the happiness and excitementon the faces of everyone including the village head, doctor andteacher, and where many children gathered to sing a song. Khalkhgol
is located near Nomonhan, which is the site of a battle between
Russia and Japan over 70 years ago. There are still many monuments
marking this event. At the welcome party, we had a good timesinging and dancing together. Some of my Mongolian colleagues evensang a famous Japanese song, Kitaguni-no-haru, accompanied by anelectronic piano. Although this project lasted just one year, its benefits
were recognized and the running costs for at least the following year
were included in the village budget.
After this experience, I am keen to make further contributions
to local communities. I am proud of the way Japan has supported andencouraged these people, but I hope we can do even more to accelerate
and promote projects that will help people not only in other countries
but also here in Japan.

Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)
http://www.nhk.or.jp/nagoya/Fields of activity: D igital terrestrial broadcasting

International standardization of current and future digital terrestrial
broadcasting
It is a great honor to receive the ITU-AJ International Activity
Encouragement Award. I am deeply indebted to The ITU
Association of Japan and everyone who has offered me their guidance.
Since 2014, I have been involved with Working Party 6A ofITU-R Study Group 6, where we are working on the revision andformulation of documents concerning terrestrial digital broadcasting.
This included revising Recommendation ITU-R BT.1368,
which relates to planning criteria, including protection ratios, fordigital terrestrial television services in the VHF/UHF bands, andcreating ITU-R BT.2343, which relates to field trials of 4K and 8K
transmission for the next generation of terrestrial digital broadcasting.
My first job in ITU-R standardization was to revise the ITU-R
BT.1368 Recommendation. This started at a meeting in the spring of2014, where I worked on interference protection ratios for DVB-T2
and ISDB-T in Colombia, which is one of the countries in SouthAmerica that has adopted the DVB-T2 standard. At the fall 2014
meeting, we revised the recommendation to make some corrections

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based on experimental results obtained in Japan. With the supportof Brazil, which is another member of the ISDB-T family, the issues
were resolved not only at the meeting but also in preliminary behindthe-scenes discussions in Colombia. We eventually became goodfriends and often went out to dinner together.
I have also spent a good part of my career working on the ITU-RBT.2343 report on field trials of 4K and 8K television via terrestrial
digital broadcasts. At the fall 2014 meeting, we proposed the creationof a report by Japan, and the first version of this report was publishedat the spring 2015 meeting. Also, for public viewings using 8K
UHDTV transmissions in Brazil during the 2016 Rio Olympics, werevised the report into the form of a joint proposal by Japan and Brazil
with the cooperation of the Brazilian supervisory authorities.
Through our international standardization activities at the ITU,
I hope that Japan’s broadcasting technology will lead the world, andthat the world’s broadcasting industry will continue to evolve.

Yoshitaka Hakamada

Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)
http://www.nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/

Fields of activity: D igital broadcasting

International standardization of channel bonding for 4K and 8K cable TV
transmission

I am honored to receive the ITU-AJ International Activity
Encouragement Award. My sincere gratitude goes out to The ITU
Association of Japan and to all my colleagues.
In Japan, we are making steady progress towards the start of4K and 8K satellite broadcasting in December 2018. From 2014,
I participated in Study Group 9 (SG9), which is concerned withcable TV research, and I became involved with the standardizationof channel bonding technology that was developed for cable TV
transmissions of 4K and 8K satellite broadcasts. Channel bonding
technology is covered by three Recommendations (ITU-T
Recommendations J.183, J.288 and J.94).
With the aim of fast-tracking the international standardizationof channel bonding technology, I took part in the ITU-R SG9
meeting of September 2014, even though the system was still inthe middle of being studied here in Japan. At this meeting, in order
to complete the international standardization without making it
inconsistent with the details of Japan’s domestic standardization, I
introduced a contributory document proposing revisions to existing
Recommendations J.183 (multiplexing frames) and J.94 (service

Katsumasa Hirose

information; SI), for which it was known that standardization efforts
were required in Japan, and I started working on standardization atITU-T SG9.
Then, at the ITU-T SG9 meeting in June 2015, based on theprogress that Japan had made in standardization, we proposed amethod for dealing with the variable-length packet format adopted
for 4K and 8K satellite broadcasting, and began drafting the newRecommendation J.288.
At the ITU-T SG9 meeting in January 2016, we preparedrevised drafts of the existing Recommendations J.183 and J.94
and a draft of a new Recommendation J.288 aimed at achieving
consistency with the contents of the Japanese standard issued inNovember 2015. Following discussions at this meeting, all three draft
recommendations were approved and in March 2016 they were allissued as Recommendations.
This award has encouraged me to continue working on
standardization activities aimed at the development of broadcasting
technology in the future.

Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)
http://www.nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/

Fields of activity: ISDB-T, EWBS

Promoting ISDB-T in Peru — our neighbor across the Pacific Ocean
It is a great privilege to receive the ITU-AJ International Activity
Encouragement Award. I would like to express my sincere gratitude
to The ITU Association of Japan and all my colleagues. Starting inOctober 2012, I spent two years working as a technical cooperation
expert for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA),
and spent time working in Peru to promote the spread of terrestrial
digital broadcasting (ISDB-T). Like Japan, Peru is located on thePacific “Ring of Fire”, where major earthquakes and tsunamis occur
periodically, and also experiences abnormal weather events that cancause flooding and other problems. I worked on the introductionof an emergency warning broadcast system (EWBS), which isone of the features of ISDB-T. Our plan was to set up terrestrial
digital transmission facilities in seven cities, and to multiplex theterrestrial digital signals with EWBS from the capital city Lima sothat emergency information can be received via broadcasts in ruralareas. The project was officially started in 2012, and a little over four
years later, we were able to start operating the system in Peru in June

2016. When an earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico (M8.1) in
September 2017, EWBS was used to inform people of the arrival ofa tsunami. This made Peru the first country outside Japan to makepractical use of this system. In the future, I hope that Peru’s EWBS
will continue to protect as many people as possible.
Peru may be a long way from Japan, but we are both neighborsof the Pacific Ocean, and there are strong expectations that Peru
will import terrestrial digital broadcasting and other technologies
from Japan. In the meantime, I am proud to have spent two years
promoting the spread of terrestrial digital broadcasting in Peru, andmy contribution, however small, is something I will always remember
fondly. I hope that Peru and all the other countries that have adopted
ISDB-T will continue to enjoy the benefits of this technology in thefuture. With the encouragement of this award, I hope to continue
working on the international development of ISDB-T, and perhaps
contribute to the spread of next-generation 4K and 8K broadcasting
systems.

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