September 11, 2023 Results of Solicitation for Opinions on “Draft of Report on Verification of Competition Rules 2023” and Publication of the Report

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) solicited opinions from Friday, June 23 through Monday, July 24, 2023, on a “Draft of Report on Verification of Competition Rules 2023” 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.
Based on the results of the solicitation for opinions, the Working Group has compiled the “Report on Verification of Competition Rules 2023,” which is now available to the public.

1. Overview

The Act Partially Amending the Telecommunications Business Act (Act No. 5 of 2019, hereafter referred to as the “Amended Act”), which came into effect in October 2019, established a system to completely separate telecommunications charges from handset charges, prohibit excessive enclosure of customers, etc. In light of this, the Working Group on Verification of Competition Rules (hereafter the “WG”) has been organized under the Meeting for Telecommunications Market Validation to evaluate and verify the effectiveness of the measures taken under the Amended Act and their impact on the mobile market.
The WG has been continually evaluating and verifying the impacts since the fiscal 2020 and has previously published the “Report on Verification of Competition Rules 2020,” “Report on Verification of Competition Rules 2021,” and “Report on Verification of Competition Rules 2022,” in October 2020, September 2021, and September 2022, respectively.
For 2023, the WG considered the ongoing environmental changes after the previous reports and analyzed and evaluated the state of enforcement of Article 27-3 of the Telecommunications Business Act (Act No. 86 of 1984) and the competitive environment in the mobile market. The WG has also addressed new issues pointed out during various reviews, discussing the necessary measures to promote fair competition further.
Recently, taking into account the discussions and the results of the solicitation for opinions, the “Report on Verification of Competition Rules 2023” has been compiled. MIC has decided to open it to the public, along with the results of the solicitation for opinions.

2. Results of solicitation for opinions

MIC solicited opinions on the draft report from Friday, June 23 through Monday, July 24, 2023, and received 43 opinions.

• *
  The published materials are in Japanese only.