Summary of Meeting of the Radio Regulatory Council (No. 890)



1. Date and Time
  December 8, 2004 (Wednesday)
16:00 to 16:14
2. Location
  Meeting Room of MIC (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
(Meeting Room No. 1002;10th floor)
3. Attendees (Honorifics omitted)
(1) Members of the Radio Regulatory Council
  Yasuhiko Yasuda (Chairperson), Takeo Inokuchi (Vice-Chairperson), Kashiko Kodate
(2) Hearing Examiner of the Radio Regulatory Council
  Taku Kiyasu
(3) Secretary
  Masao Okamoto (Deputy Director of the General Affairs Division, Telecommunications Bureau)
(4) MIC (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
  Aritomi (Director-General of Telecommunications Bureau), Takeda (Director-General of the Radio Department), and others

4. Minutes of the Meeting
(1) Concerning the draft ministerial ordinance that partially amends the Regulations for Enforcement of the Radio Law
(Consultation No. 37)
      MIC explained the draft ministerial ordinance that partially amends the Regulations for Enforcement of the Radio Law and provided a questions-and-answers session as follows.
 Note that as Article 99-12 (1) of the Radio Law requires that MIC hear public comments on this matter, MIC appointed Taku Kiyasu as the hearing examiner who would preside over procedures for inviting public comments.

a. Explanation by MIC
   This intends to establish the special case applicable to parties on the other end of radio communications that are included in a license for aeronautical stations.
 The ICAO Convention (Convention on International Civil Aviation) includes the following provision that guarantees equal rights: Any country that has ratified the Convention shall make aviation control communications equally available not only to its own aircraft but also to foreign aircraft. The ratified countries have incorporated it into domestic law in two different ways: the British way and the US way. The former is that aviation control communications may be licensed to an aircraft regardless of its nationality. The latter is that foreign radio stations are excluded from the licensing process, but aviation control communications are made available to foreign aircraft through a telecommunication carrier. Currently, a telecommunication carrier called Air Link provides this type of services at all airports in the US.
 Japan has adopted a system of the US type. In fact, however, only Nippon Airport Radio Service CO., Ltd. provides this service at 7 airports, including Narita International Airport, and this type of service is not offered at 17 other airports because there are no service providers. For this reason, MIC intends to partially amend the Regulations for Enforcement of the Radio Law so that it may include, as a special case, foreign aircraft stations that are opened within foreign aircraft within the list of parties on the other end of radio communications for aircraft stations that belong to domestic air carriers.

 Note that MIC also intends to approach a request related to Nagoya Airport and included in the structural reform special district requests last year, by amending the relevant ordinance to process the request not at a special district level but at a national level through deregulation. (The request was made due to the fact that as Nippon Airport Radio Service Co., Ltd. would move to the newly-opened Chubu International Airport to from Nagoya Airport, there would be no such service providers at Nagoya Airport.)
 For this reason, it is highly likely that this special case provision will be directly applied first to Nagoya Airport. As several requests similar to Nagoya's request were submitted to MIC, however, MIC thinks that this type of radio communications will be also made available at other airports.

b. Major questions and answers
  - The following question was asked:
Is it possible that foreign aircraft may arrive at an airport that has no air carrier?
MIC answered as follows:
For now, MIC does not anticipate that this will happen.
- The following question was asked:
Is Japan behind other countries in this respect?
MIC answered as follows:
As explained earlier, the European countries adopt the British method that may grant licenses to aircraft stations regardless of the aircraft's nationality while other countries, such as Korea, use the US method. If MIC had allowed the service to be provided to specific airports only, it would not have caused any inconvenience. In the case of Japan, however, as reality has moved a little ahead of the development of the system, systemic inadequacies have emerged.
 
(The Radio Regulatory Council Secretariat is responsible for the wording of this document.)