# Section 9

# Promoting International Strategies

## 1 Promoting international policies

## (1) Promoting the Asia Broadband Program

As an action plan to build a broadband environment in Asia, the MIC, and related ministries, formulated the “Asia Broadband Program” in March 2003 on the basis of the “e-Japan Priority Policy Program-2002” and the “Basic Policies for Economic and Fiscal Policy Management and Structural Reform 2002.” This program is treated as a subject to be steadily promoted in the “e-Japan Strategy II” and “e-Japan Priority Policy Program - 2004” as well.

The MIC arranged for cooperation to promote this program with nine Asian countries/regions to date, and reached an agreement on a cooperation arrangement in eight ICT fields in Japan, China, and the Republic of Korea. Furthermore, the MIC implements various R&D projects, human resources development measures, and policy dialogues based on these arrangements.

Furthermore, in order to accelerate the measures based on this program under strong public-private collaboration, the MIC convened the Asia Broadband Promotion Council starting in March 2004. In August of the same year, the council indicated the “measures that should be made into projects by fiscal 2005” and “projects that should be implemented or launched by fiscal 2005” with regard to fields to be promoted intensively and the concrete measures in the priority fields. Currently, the MIC is creating projects and implementing measures based on these indications.

## (2) Bilateral and multilateral efforts

In the June 2001 Japan-U.S. summit meeting held at Camp David in the United States, a target was set to cooperate with each other for sustainable growth through Japan-U.S. dialogues, and multi-faceted discussions are held every year under the various meetings including vice-ministerial-level dialogues, public-private meetings, regulatory reforms, and competition policy initiatives.

In October 2004, the Japanese and U.S. governments exchanged written requests on regulatory reforms and competition policy in fields including telecommunications, with regard to Japan-U.S. regulatory reform and competition policy initiatives.

Furthermore, the Japan-EU action plan, which sets forth concrete fields and content for ten years of cooperation starting in 2001, was adopted in the Japan-EU summit meeting held in Brussels (Belgium) in December 1999. In June 2004, the “Joint Statement on Cooperation on Information and Communication Technology” was issued in the joint press statement of the 13th Japan-EU summit meeting.

In addition, in January 2005, Taro Asao, Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications, met with the Indian Minister for Communications and Information Technology when he visited Japan, and adopted and signed a joint statement on the future promotion of bilateral cooperation in the ICT field including promotion of the Asia Broadband Program.

## (3) Cooperation and collaboration by Japan, China, and the Republic of Korea

In September 2002, the First China-Japan-Korea ICT Ministerial Meeting was held in Marrakesh, Morocco, with the aim of promoting cooperation among Japan, China, and the Republic of Korea in the information and communications field and with the attendance of representatives from private companies and research institutes in the three countries.

The Third China-Japan-Korea ICT Ministerial Meeting was held in Sapporo, Japan in July 2004. From the viewpoint of further promoting cooperation among Japan, China, and the Republic of Korea in the information and communications field, the “arrangement for cooperation” that had been agreed to in 2003 was revised, and “cooperation on RFID tags/sensor networks” and other matters were included as new cooperative items.

## (4) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

The second phase of WSIS is scheduled to be held in Tunis, Tunisia in November 2005. The agenda includes consideration of a concrete method and a mechanism of implementation of the Plan of Action adopted at the first phase of WSIS held in Geneva (Switzerland) in December 2003, the basic principles of Internet Governance, and the financing mechanism for bridging the digital divide.

The Japanese government is planning to contribute as much as possible to the second phase of WSIS, in cooperation with the ITU and the wide-ranging international organizations.

Meanwhile, the Japanese government has been actively contributing by, for example, holding a WSIS thematic meeting on a ubiquitous network society in Japan in May 2005, and drawing up the proposal on foreseeable problems toward the realization of a ubiquitous network society and specific measures to overcome such challenges.

## 2 Promoting international cooperation

Information and communications are attracting high