ADVERSITY BREEDS INNOVATION

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

When, in the late 90s, I lived in Japan what amazed me nearly as much the depth of culture was the cost of a simple telephone call. Public phones gobbled coins throughout conversation. Far easier was to employ magnetic phone cards that, while equally ravenous, were more discreet about their appetites.

When Internet usage began to swell throughout North America, it lagged in Japan (and Europe too). Why? The most obvious conclusion would be prohibitive telephone rates that discouraged dial-up usage.

Cut to the Kobe earthquake of January 1995. Among the casualties were telephone cables.

Their loss isolated hundreds of thousands. After the disaster, sales of cell phones accelerated to the point where today, nearly every Nihon-jin owns one.

Now there’s broadband. And overseas, almost everyone is mobile. My Japanese brother-in-law Googles on his cell. He pays his train fare with his cell. He watches television — any station — on his cell. And, of course, he phones exclusively on his cell; he simply doesn’t own a landline.

Last month, I rode the Tokyo subways and monitored usage in my immediate circle. Nearly 30% of riders (including my daughter and her Nintendo DS) were connected to devices. And those on phones weren’t talking. Signage specifically discouraged conversations within train carriages — and some things haven’t changed: the Japanese are notoriously obedient.

Here, we in North America trail other continents in mobile technology. Once digital leaders, we have been handily leapfrogged.

Today, our digital adversity is similarly, price. We consider mobile data services excessively expensive. (And that may be so as we occupy significantly more expansive masses of land. Yes, it’s wireless but wireless needs towers everywhere, right?)

Just the same, but Yoshi in Tokyo willingly pays the equivalent of $400-500 a month for his mobile services. Think: As gas prices continue to rise, will our demand for digital information and entertainment drive demand and competition up and prices down? Will we invent something new? To renounce over-paying for fuel, will we just shrug and forward a monthly $500 to our digital carriers instead?