August 10, 2021 Result of Appeal for Opinions on Draft Revision to Guidelines for Ensuring Smooth Distribution and Use of Mobile Terminal Equipment and Draft Guidelines for Promoting eSIM Services, and Release of Finalized Guidelines

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) made an appeal for opinions on a draft revision to the Guidelines for Ensuring Smooth Distribution and Use of Mobile Terminal Equipment, along with draft Guidelines for Promoting eSIM Services from Saturday, May 29 through Monday, June 28, 2021. As a result, 21 opinions were submitted.
Accordingly, MIC will open the submitted opinions and MIC’s views on the opinions. Furthermore, with consideration of the result of the appeal for opinions, MIC revised the Guidelines for Ensuring Smooth Distribution and Use of Mobile Terminal Equipment and completed the Guidelines for Promoting eSIM Services. Accordingly, MIC will release these Guidelines.

1. Result of appeal for opinions

From November 2020, the Switching Facilitation Taskforce (headed by Chief Investigator HAYASHI Shuya, Professor, Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University) has been conducting intensive, specialized, and technical studies to facilitate transfers between carriers. In this connection, the report of the Switching Facilitation Taskforce was released on May 28, 2021.
Based on the report, MIC prepared the drafted revision to the Guidelines for Ensuring Smooth Distribution and Use of Mobile Terminal Equipment and drafted the Guidelines for Promoting eSIM Services. MIC considers that they will ensure a fair competition environment and improve users’ convenience by minimizing the cost of switching between service providers and facilitating users’ change of service providers. Accordingly, MIC made this appeal for opinions from Saturday, May 29 through Monday, June 28, 2021. As a result, 21 opinions were submitted.

2. Guidelines

The revised Guidelines and formulated Guidelines based on the result of the appeal for opinions are as follows:

• Guidelines for Ensuring Smooth Distribution and Use of Mobile Terminal Equipment (revised on August 10, 2021)
• Guidelines for Promoting eSIM Services (Formulated on August 10, 2021)