TOKYO, Dec. 4, 2020—In 1985, Jaapan streamlined its telecom law for privatizing the former national telecom company, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, and liberalizing the industry. In December 2020, the Japanese government would launch a new body for intervening in telecom carriers’ business to lower smart phone user costs, in a move departing from decades of laissez-faire policy.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the Consumer Affairs Agency would form the new body that would collect business and technical data from smart phone carriers and publicly release the information to pressure carriers to lower user costs.
Establishment of the new body, which is et to be named, contravenes the liberalization and deregulation policy that Yoshihide Suga, the prime minister, pledged to enforce as his core work.
Since the 1985 law amendment, dozens of telecom carriers came into the market, from both Japan and overseas. Over the intervening years, those with deep pockets acquired smaller ones and now, there are only three big carriers — NTT, which spun off from the national telecom; KDDI, the former government-sponsored carrier for overseas telecom; and Yahoo. the unit of Softbank and the new and only independent carrier. Rakuten, which is managed by Rakuten group, is offering services by leasing landlines and bands from NTT’s subsidiary NTT DoCoMo and KDDI’s au unit trying to become the fourth major carrier. In addition, there are hundreds of MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators) that borrower NTT DoCoMo and au lines to offer lower priced services than the major ones.
Japan’s smart phone user costs are much higher than in other countries, roughly double that of Verison and ATT, so the country needs to lower costs further. Yet, doing so with government intervention is raising the public’s eyebrows.
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