September 16, 2021 Result of Appeal for Opinions on Draft of 2021 Report on Verification of Competition Rules and Release of Finalized Report

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) made an appeal for opinions from Wednesday, July 14 through Tuesday, August 17, 2021, on a document entitled “Draft of 2021 Report on Verification of Competition Rules”,compiled by the Working Group on Verification of Competition Rules (chaired by NIIMI Ikufumi, Professor Emeritus at Meiji University) under the Meeting for Telecommunications Market Validation.
The Working Group has now issued a document entitled “2021 Report on Verification of Competition Rules” based on the result of the appeal for opinions.

1. Overview

The Act on Partial Amendments to the Telecommunications Business Act (Act No. 5 of 2019, hereafter “the Amendatory Act”), which was enacted in October 2019, has put a legislation system in place to completely separate communications charges and terminal device charges and to rectify the excessive enclosure of customers, such as periodic restraint on them. Based on this system, the Working Group on Verification of Competition Rules (hereafter referred to as the “WG”) was organized under the Meeting for Telecommunications Market Validation in April 2020 to evaluate and verify the effect of measures taken under the Amendatory Act, impact on the mobile communications market, etc. In October 2020, the WG compiled and released a document entitled “2020 Report on Verification of Competition Rules” as a result of its initial verification and review.
In 2021, the WG continued evaluating and verifying the effects of the Amendatory Act and its impact on the mobile communications market in light of changes in the environment since the release of the report. At the same time, the WG focused on examining changes in the environment of the mobile communications market and issues that have become newly apparent in the course of a variety of studies and has been discussing the necessary measures to promote fair competition further.
Based on the results of the discussions and the appeal for opinions, the WG has compiled a document entitled “2021 Report on Verification of Competition Rules”. Accordingly, MIC has decided to release the same with the result of the appeal for opinions.

2. Result of appeal for opinions

MIC made an appeal for opinions on this draft report from Wednesday, July 14 through Tuesday, August 17, 2021, and 29 opinions were submitted.