Thursday, May 7, 2015

No. 876: Supporting Southeast Asian countries in their attempt to improve infrastructure with the help of information technology (May 7, 2015)

Business trend:
Japanese companies are strengthening their efforts to help Southeast Asian countries improve their infrastructures using information technology. The Japanese government will provide them with indirect support. A syndicate led by Honda Motor will start demonstration experiments of a system to relieve traffic congestion in the Philippines. The system to be introduced in the Philippine is the Vehicle Information and Communication System (VICS) that has already been introduced in Japan. It tells how much the road is congested using the information available from the positional information of vehicles and transmits the information on traffic jam to smartphones and car navigation systems via data broadcasting. JVC Kenwood, Zenrin that is Japan’s map publisher, and Sumitomo Electric joined the syndicate.  

Dentsu that is Japan’s largest advertising agency is to build a business infrastructure that merges broadcasting and communications in alliance with the national broadcasting company in Vietnam. It is developing a system to transmit disaster prevention information to smartphones. Hitachi will start educational-support business that utilizes tablets. NTT Data is scheduled to launch a system that supports air traffic control this month. NEC and Fujitsu will focus on systems to notify information on natural disasters like flood and earthquake and those to detect cybercrimes.  

List of business Japanese companies develop in Southeast Asian Countries
Honda and others
Plan to conduct demonstration experiments of a system to relieve traffic congestion in the Philippines in alliance with leading Japanese companies in car navigation and map publishing.   
Dentsu
Develops a system to deliver TV contents via the Internet in alliance with the national TV broadcasting company in Vietnam.
Hitachi
Plans to start educational-support system using tablets making the best use of it successful business of digital textbooks in Japan.
Fujitsu
Has delivered a system to the disaster prevention bureau in Jakarta, and plans to collect information on the level of river water from citizens to formulate flood actions.  
NEC
Develop human resources to cope with cybercrime in alliance with the Singaporean government.
NTT Data
Scheduled to put a system that supports air traffic control on the market on May 11.   

The Japanese government reached an agreement with the Thai government to strengthen the relations between the two countries in the field of info-communication technology. Japan made a success in the export of IT infrastructure to South America: A total of 17 South American countries adopted the Japanese terrestrial digital broadcasting system. Japanese companies are expected to upgrade their efforts to export technology and service in addition to hardware including equipment in the field of IT infrastructure. 

 A driving support system for express highway

Fujitsu's RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) sensor