Address by Mr. Atsuo Hirai Industrial Electronics Division, Machinery and Information Industries Bureau, MITI I congratulate you on the establishment of the Echonet Consortium and would like to express my respect for Mr. Sano and everyone else involved in this project for their efforts in bringing it to fruition. Recent years have seen the rapid digitalization of consumer electronics and home appliances, and their convergence with PCs is creating an entirely new market. MITI believes that the development of home networks, that is, networks that connect appliances in the home, represent an entirely new sector that will change the way we live. In June of last year, I presented a summary of research on consumer electronics in the digital age at a private informal meeting with the director of MITI's Machinery and Information Industries Bureau. Another important development is the growing interest in the issues of global warming and the environment, as demonstrated at last December's COP3, and global efforts being made to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. In terms of energy conservation, home networks are indispensable to DSM, which is expected to generate major energy savings, and to new lifestyle proposals, such as homecare systems, based on information appliances. In this sense, we look forward to the development of key related technologies and to the promotion of their adoption through the development of applications and services. MITI has earmarked a portion of its FY 1996 supplementary budget to assist in the development of the kind of middleware being proposed by the Echonet Consortium. In addition, the government recently announced an additional \16 trillion in home-priming measures as part of its comprehensive economic package for FY 1998, and at MITI \110 billion of these funds have been set aside for information-related projects. We intend to use this money to promote R&D in applied digital technology and to assist the development of energy-conserving technologies. If any of the members gathered here today have proposals for me, I am ready to listen. In conclusion, I would like to offer my sincere hope that this Consortium is able to achieve wonderful results under the guidance of Mssrs. Sano, Mori, Kasaba, and Yamazaki.