It's been a while since I checked in here. Much going on, but I wanted
to ask people about something. Our city council (in rural Hokkaido)
have gotten their little heads together and decided that, despite
budget constraints, they're going to push the installation of a fibre
optic link to every home in town. The provider is a cable television
service, and it's being touted by the city by listing a number of free
services, but none of the drawbacks. This to the tune of JPY 600,000
per home (our tax money), which I can't help thinking is a little bit
excessive for governments running deficits. Maybe the council gets
kickbacks.

Anyway, this is strange enough. As of now, it's also being presented
as a decision already taken, and we are all supposed to ご理解とご協力 when
the cable company guys come to install equipment in our homes.

But then it gets weirder. As part of the package they are also
installing a network terminal with a speaker. They present it as a way
for the city office to broadcast voice messages into our homes any
time they wish, as if that's a good thing. Of course, being Japan,
first on the list is "in the event of an emergency," but they also
admit that it will be used to broadcast advertising and little
reminders like, "Pay your taxes" or "Be careful, it's raining."
Otherwise they are being extremely evasive about the capabilities of
this device. They do not say who makes it. They don't say if it is
globally IP addressable. They don't say if it can be turned off, or
for that matter, if it contains a microphone. Their diagrams also
indicate that it uses no electrical power (they're pretending it's
entirely free), which seems unlikely, but then of course, if it does
require power, it's not going to be of much use in a real emergency.
Also disturbing, this device apparently acts as the cable modem, so if
you want to use the IP denwa or Internet services that the cable
company provides (extra costs, both), you will be required to keep the
device powered on.

Actually already I can see big drawbacks. We get 40Mbps ADSL service
for 3,800/month flat rate. Comparable bandwidth from the cable
provider would cost 5,100, and I'm sure QOS requirements will make IP
traffic last in the priority queue behind television and IP telephony.

So, without wanting to sound TOO much like a conspiracy nut, I just
wondered, first of all, if anyone has heard of this sort of scheme,
and in particular the speaker-equipped cable modem? Who makes them,
what functions they provide, if manuals are available online, etc.
Also just from a last-ditch perspective, can the city office really
force us to have this thing installed? Presumably even if they can, we
can unplug or disable it, but it is not clear who will actually own
the device, and so, that may be problematic.

On top of it all, we don't even have a television, so the whole public
rationale -- access to digital television -- is meaningless. From our
point of view it's just a way to put a 600,000 yen speaker in our
house and make us pay for it. Has anyone heard of these things?

Thanks for any information/pointers you can provide!