Are Wireless Routers illegal in Japan?
 

As some of you know I will be going to Japan for a while. My wife's family in Okinawa doesn't have a wireless router so I was thinking of bringing my Wireless-G 3com router with me so that when I got there I could plug it up and use my laptop upstairs rather then go down 2 flights of stairs just to get online.

Someone told me that they thought that wireless routers were illegal in Japan and they had to be specially bought 'japanese' ones due to radio frequency differences.

Is this true???

I wouldn't worry too much about using your "illegal" router. Am no expert, but notice that the routers here also use 802.11 b/g/etc. frequencies, so I doubt there is actually any real difference.

Most countries give you a spiel about how you can only use radio equipment only designed for the local market. However this being said , I have bought both my wireless access points abroad and they both function well and do not interfere with any other local services. IIRC the main difference is that some channels are not used in Japan. You might want to do some research and check that out and make sure you only use channels that are in use locally.

In other words, I don't think it's anything that warrants any concern.

I'm using a Linksys wireless router which I bought in Japan... I am almost certain it has exactly the same spec as the one that I saw at a colleague's home in the USA. (Well - It looks the same and it has the same product code...)

I believe the Japanese government requires an importer (such as a Japanese company which is distributing Linksys products here) to get a license for the wireless products that they want to sell in Japan. Some friends of mine had to do that in order to start selling a Chinese-made radio product here - they did not have to make any changes to the product - just fill in a lot of forms to show that it met Japanese standards.

If you plan to start an import business for electronics, you'd better check the law. But, frankly, nobody is going to stop you if you are carrying ONE wireless router in your suitcase. There are surely dozens of people in Okinawa who are using wireless routers which were purchased in the US.

A little more technical answer. WiFi is legal in Japan, but there are few small differences compared to US or rest of the world.

The 802.11 standard specifies 14 channels. Japan permits all 14 channels to be used. US only uses channel 1 through 11, and the rest of the world allows channels 1 through 13.

What does this mean? If you take an US-spec adapter to use in Japan, you may not be able to see the wireless access points on channel 12-14. There may be a country setting in the device driver that will enable those channels. Likewise for the access point, it may not be compliant to the local regulations until you change the country setting in the configuration.

I have a sony vaio that has a built in wireless B/G/bluetooth adapter. How do I change the settings? is it in the bios? or in windows? or is ther ea way to 'hack' it? I mean I think it would be better to just leave it open to all 14 channels all the time.

Usually, mini-PCI adapters (built-in) can see all the channels. It is only TRANSMITTING that is restricted. You might be able to find a hack firmware upgrade for the router. (I only have experience with the super-modifiable Linksys WRT54G)

what you heard might have been confused with cordless telephones? those type of phones ARE illegal in Japan because they use some of the frequencies that Japanese emergency communications use. So we arent allowed to use non-Japanese manufactured cordless phones here in Japan.

I havent heard anything about wireless routers other than the ISPs say you cant use ANY kind of router because they want you to pay for 4 accounts if you have 4 users. But no way they can tell if you have one and I am not paying for 4 connections for all 4 people in my house, paying for one is enough, so wireless router it is.