Original telecommunications market research and telecommunications sector trend analysis for the national telecommunications industry.

Competitive intelligence, regional telecommunications company rankings and SWOT analyses on international and domestic telecommunications companies.

The Report provides industry professionals and researchers, operators, equipment suppliers and vendors, corporate and financial services analysts and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on the national telecommunications industry.

" The Asia Telecommunications Report is used for benchmarking industry views against BMI's independent forecasts; for market research and analysis of industry trends. It also provides competitive intelligence on leading companies. "
Chi-Wen Tsai, Managing Director, ROHDE & SCHWARZ Taiwan Ltd

Key Benefits of Report

-Benchmark BMI's Independent 5-Year Telecommunications Industry Forecast to test other views - a key input for successful budgeting and strategic business planning in the national telecommunications market.
-Target Business Opportunities & Risks in the Telecommunications Sector through our reviews of latest industry trends, regulatory changes, and major deals, projects and investments.
-Exploit Latest Competitive Telecommunications Intelligence & company SWOTS on your competitors and peers through company rankings by sales, market share, investments and leading products and services.

Executive Summary
Summary of BMI's key industry forecasts and trend analysis, covering ICT, fixed-line, mobile and internet markets, and headline news of key industry events from the latest quarter.

Market Overview
At-a-glance outlook of the structure, size and value of the industry, including an overview of key players and a snapshot of regional penetration rates for fixed-line, mobile and internet markets.

Business Environment Rankings
BMI provides a cross-border analysis of telecoms regulatory systems across regional markets, and their investor prospects, discussing the merits and downfalls of each country's business environment, and ranking them in order of competitiveness. The rankings take into account industry factors, such as Market Maturity, Growth Potential, Competitive Environment and Licensing Framework in addition to BMI's political and economic risk ratings.

BMI 5-Year Industry Forecast
Historic data series and 5-year forecasts to end-2012 for all key industry indicators (see list below), supported by explicit assumptions, plus analysis of key downside risks to the main forecast.

Fixed-Line Telephony - Telephone Lines ('000); Telephone Lines/100 Inhabitants;
Cellular Telephony - Phone Subscribers ('000); Mobile Phone Subscribers/ 100 Inhabitants; Mobile Phone Subscribers/100 Fixed Line Subscribers;
Internet Markets - Internet Users ('000); Internet Users/100 Inhabitants; Broadband Internet Subscribers ('000); Broadband Internet Subscribers/100 Inhabitants;
Multimedia Markets - PCs ('000); PCs/100 Inhabitants; TV households ('000s); Pay-TV subscribers ('000s); Pay-TV subscribers/100 inhabitants; Cable TV subscribers ('000s); Direct-to-Home Subscribers ('000s)
BMI 5-Year Macroeconomic Forecast
BMI forecasts for all headline macroeconomic indicators, including real GDP growth, inflation, fiscal balance, trade balance, current account and external debt.

Competitive Landscape & Rankings
Commentary on key operators highlighting ownership structures, latest available revenue figures, market share analysis and ARPU counts.

Company Profiles & SWOTS
Company profiles, including SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analyses, fully researched senior executives and contact details, business activity, leading products and services, and a record of all recent foreign direct investments and projects.

The Sector At A Glance

Key Insights On The Telecomunications sector of Japan

This quarter Japan's three main mobile operators - NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank Mobile - remained focused on tariffs, handset variety and applications as they braced themselves for the entry of mobile number portability (MNP), which commenced on October 24 2006. Growth in the mobile market remained slow over the quarter, with just over 1mn net additions, leading operators to focus on retaining the loyalty of their customer base. Indeed, NTT DoCoMo managed to do this just prior to the entry of MNP, with its latest figures for the three months ended September 2006 announcing that its churn rates had improved by 0.21 percentage points to 0.6%. KDDI also reported better churn rates, with a 0.09 percentage point improvement over the quarter.

However, in the month after MNP was introduced, NTT DoCoMo saw the biggest loss in subscriber numbers as a result of its implementation. The operator lost 17,500 users over November, which brought its user base to 52.126mn for the period, while also announcing that 160,000 of its users had switched to other operators. Neither did Softbank Mobile's discount tariff, which undercut its competitors, manage to save it from losing customers to rivals as a result of MNP. The operator announced that while it saw 68,700 net additions over the month, it had lost 53,900 users. Only KDDI reported a substantial rise, up by 325,000 net additions, of which 225,300 users derived from rival operator networks.

KDDI, which has been encouraging migration of users from its PHS service, TU-KA, to its au service, has also sought to encourage growth of its customer base through MNP. This it has managed to achieve by introducing a range of new handsets, with 14 autumn/winter models, and a simpler and cheaper range of tariffs from its Double Flat Rates Light Package to its My Plan Discount. In addition, the operator also recently signed a contract with Google to add to its mobile music and news services. Looking forward to 2007, KDDI has stated that in order to attract customers, its main targets will be to enhance retention measures and customer acquisition with MNP by boosting product competitiveness. Reinforcing its competitive edge in terms of handset charges and content, as well as improving product development capabilities, will continue to feature, alongside the promotion of sales together with mobile solutions services.

However, despite this internal shuffling as a result of MNP, we retain our belief that the mobile market will continue to grow as previously forecast, leading us to maintain our existing mobile predictions. Neither have we changed our forecasts for fixed-line or internet markets, while BMI holds its belief that broadband, while continuing to rise, will be fuelled increasingly by optical access services rather than ADSL. This is a trend acknowledged by NTT. The operator stated that ADSL connections fell by 1.7% between March and September 2006, against Hikari Phone, its optical IP Phone services, which over the same period announced a 127% rise.