To: Distribution
From: David Kahaner ONRFE [kahaner@xroads.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp]
Re: ISDN papers
8 May 1990

In 1985 the Electronic Communications Business Law was enacted in Japan. 
This decontrolled the country's electrical communication business, 
resulting in the establishment of many new companies to provide 
comptetition to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Co (NTT). ISDN (Integrated 
Service Digital Network) is the most noteworthy development in the 
electrical communication service technology in Japan since telephone 
service began here 100 years ago. ISDN shifts the telephone interface 
from analog to digital. Many new services are planned and existing 
services will be improved, even to include HDTV transmission.  

This is a complicated technology with a tremendous literature. Most of it 
is out of my field but Foreign Broadcast Information Service has just 
published (April 1990) a modest sized report containing translations of 
five papers overviewing this subject. I found the papers readable and 
extremely helpful. The translations are into excellent English. In 
particular there is one paper describing the compression and coding 
algorithms used for HDTV applications. The papers also include key 
references.  

JPRS Report JPRS-JST-90-020, 23 April 1990, "Science and Technology 
Japan, ISDN-Related Developments". 

For information:
National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
5285 Port Royal Road
Springfield, Virginia 22161 USA

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