December 28, 2021 Request for Accelerating Development of 5G Base Stations

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) requests mobile telephone carriers to take measures to accelerate the development of 5G base stations to achieve the comprehensive coverage of the fifth-generation mobile communications system (hereafter referred to as “5G”). These mobile phone carriers are NTT Docomo Inc. (headed by II Motoyuki, President and CEO), KDDI Corporation (headed by TAKAHASHI Makoto, President and Representative Director), Okinawa Cellular Telephone Company (headed by YUASA Hideo, President and Representative Director), SoftBank Corp. (headed by MIYAGAWA Junichi, President and CEO), and Rakuten Mobile, Inc. (headed by YAMADA Yoshihisa, Representative Director and President).

For the future economic society and people’s lives, 5G is an important infrastructure. Developing it in an integrated manner in cities and rural areas is necessary to realize the Digital Rural City Nation concept. Up to now, MIC has been focusing on developing advanced specified 5G base stations (master stations) as the foundation for the nationwide deployment of 5G. However, in the future, it will be important to make population coverage improvements by accelerating the development of 5G base stations (slave stations) and the development of advanced specified 5G base stations so that the public can experience the benefits of 5G.
That is why MIC requests the mobile telephone carriers (NTT Docomo Inc. (headed by II Motoyuki, President and CEO), KDDI Corporation (headed by TAKAHASHI Makoto, President and Representative Director), Okinawa Cellular Telephone Company (headed by YUASA Hideo, President and Representative Director), SoftBank Corp. (headed by MIYAGAWA Junichi, President and CEO), and Rakuten Mobile, Inc. (headed by YAMADA Yoshihisa, Representative Director and President)) to take appropriate measures to accelerate the development of 5G base stations to achieve comprehensive 5G coverage.