by Hisao Iizuka, Trustee of JPNIC

I am pleased to have recently been appointed as a trustee of JPNIC.

In the past, I had worked in NTT's telecommunications network division and had been engaged in technical surveys and technical evaluations. This has placed me in a relatively good position from which to observe developments in information & telecommunications technology and market trends. I have also been engaged in the launch of NTT's multimedia operations, as well as alliances with a number of companies, particularly in the Silicon Valley and Seattle. I used to think that the force of the Internet would at some stage overwhelm the 'telephone' (by this I refer to POTS, not all voice telecommunications), and many people are currently saying that they expect IP-based traffic to overtake 'telephone'-based traffic early in the 21st century. This trend is proceeding with an unstoppable force. Thus the importance of JPNIC and other parties who have played a pioneering role in the IP field in Japan is today greater than ever.

At the same time, consumers and businesses have started to encounter a number of problems associated with the Internet. Such as security issues, problems include reliability-related matters, network congestion & delays and bandwidth guarantees, QoS issues. Further effort is also necessary in order to make a breakthrough in terms of universality, i.e. ease of use. Given the number of proposals currently circulating regarding new protocols and processing methods, I am confident that it is only a matter of time before these issues are resolved.

From my perspective as a person raised in the telecommunications industry, I believe that these sorts of problems seem to be the essence of the historical progression of telecommunications. Since the establishment of the Bell telephone company in 1878, there have been transitions made from manual switchboards to automatic switchboards in other word from magnetic telephones to electronic telephones. And there are many parallels between this process of development of communication control protocols and settlement process of the issues facing the Internet today. Similar issues also seem to be the essence of the process of development of data telecommunications, the roots of which lie in the information theory proposed by Claude E. Shannon in 1948, and the transition from 24 channel PCM transmission methods, which commenced in 1961, to the use of digital networks and modems.

However, whether it is by means of protocols or by means of devices, the resolution of these problems is likely to require a completely new approach to system architecture. It is expected that organizations such as JPNIC, while continuing to perform such tasks as domain name and address allocation, will also support the development of the Internet into the 21st century by adopting an increasingly broad and global perspective.

I hope that I will be able to use my fortunate position as a person who has been associated with both the traditional 'telephone' and the subsequent development of 'telecommunications, to contribute to the development of JPNIC from a neutral and modest perspective, keeping foresight to see future market trends. I look forward to your cooperation.