Asia-Pacific

Abstract

Chapter 6 covers a fairly wide cross-section of countries in the Asia-Pacific region (while excluding India which is covered in Chap. 4 ). Some countries merit a relatively extensive analysis either because they are in the vanguard of developments (for example, Japan and South Korea) or because of an unusual amount of licensing activity (for example, Australia and Hong Kong). Somewhat surprisingly, China is of limited interest because the state largely determines what is taking place and has so far limited progress although China is of interest because of its dedication to TD-LTE. It is also noteworthy that several large countries (for example, Bangladesh and Thailand) have barely grappled with 3G let alone 4G, so overall the Asia-Pacific region is notable more for its lack of consistency than the opposite. For this reason, inter-country comparisons are of limited use for now although there is something to be gained from a comparison with Europe where consistency is the product of European Union regulations.