The Japan Information Processing Development Centre warns that Japan’s information infrastructure is lagging behind that of the US, and says Japan needs to de-regulate its telecommunications market further to avoid being left behind. The report assessed 27 indicators of the state of the information infrastructure (including the number of personal computers per 1,000 working people, where the US was found to have 3.8 times as many) and found that the US was in the lead in most cases. Meanwhile, the 18 members of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum have added a new principle to the nine principles for building an information infrastructure already adopted: it is designed to counter the belief that liberalisation and competition are necessarily the best way forward: the Forum should take account of the the differing situations of its members into account when deciding policies.
