Porn Downloads Straining Japanese 3G Mobile Networks Takeshi says he pays 6,300 yen ($66) a month to NTT DoCoMo Inc. for unlimited Internet access, allowing him to download adult movies on his mobile phone.
“A mobile is far handier than a computer for Internet access -- I seldom use a PC outside the office,” said Tokyo travel agent Takeshi, 32, who declined to give his surname. 
Takeshi and other pornography fans are feeding a surge in demand for movie downloads in Japan, home to the world’s first third-generation wireless network. While profiting from the traffic, Tokyo-based mobile carriers DoCoMo and KDDI Corp. say they’ve been forced to impose limits on the heaviest users as the $74 billion network feels the strain.
Softbank Corp., the third-largest network and the Japanese operator of Apple Inc.’s iPhone service,
said it is also considering restrictions on users with unlimited data plans. While telecommunications companies say privacy laws prevent them from seeing what customers download, Japan’s top two pornography providers, Hokuto and Soft on Demand Co., said sales to mobile phone users are driving revenue growth. Growing Traffic
“Pornography will eventually open a debate about how carriers should modify their business model as data traffic swells,” said Yusuke Tsunoda, a telecommunications analyst at Tokai Tokyo Securities Co. “It may prompt even tighter access restrictions.”
Japan rolled out so-called third-generation, high-speed mobile services in 2001, two years before the U.S. Now, more than 91 million Japanese surf the Internet by mobile phone, downloading movies, games and music, according to the Tokyo- based Telecommunications Carriers Association. Juniper estimates Internet usage over phones in Japan is three times the level in the U.S.
The problems Japanese carriers face may spread as consumers demand more movies, music and other data-intensive downloads, including growing access to sites with adult content, said U.K.- based Juniper.
Pornography Boom
Global revenue from pornography on mobile devices will more than double to $4.9 billion in the five years to 2013, while music sales will grow by about a third, said Juniper, which provides global research on the telecommunication industry and includes Finland’s Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, Apple and Microsoft Corp. among its clients.
“We can’t see customers’ data but can surmise the biggest portion of it is probably movies,” said KDDI spokesman Keiichi Sakurai. “We can’t deny the possibility those movies include adult content.”
Customers have complained about stoppages or slow Web access, mainly around midnight when traffic from “heavy users” spikes, Sakurai said. Japanese carriers spent $74 billion building their networks since 2000, based on data provided by Wireless Intelligence, a London-based researcher.
Japan has more than 1,000 companies producing adult-content movies, generating about 17,000 titles last year, said Tim Smith, who’s worked in Japan’s telecommunications industry since 1999 and is chief executive officer of 3G service company Sairis Group KK.
‘Big Earner’
Smith says the largest Japanese adult content Internet sites have as many as 1,000 new customers a day, each paying as much as 10,000 yen as a sign-up fee.
Too much porn for Japanese 3G network 
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