Telecommunications Equipment

The EBC appreciates the opportunity to contribute to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ (MIC) policy committees as an official participant and applauds the Government’s overall commitment to an industry-led, global approach to standards and platform development. Important steps have already been taken to facilitate the product approval process, firstly by signing an EU-Japan mutual recognition agreement (MRA) for telecommunications terminal equipment in 2001, and secondly by introducing a Supplier’s Self Verification of Conformity (SVC) in 2004, similar to the Suppliers’ Declaration of Conformity (SDoC) introduced in Europe. Despite these significant achievements, however, implementation to date has been disappointing. The number of accredited testing bodies designated under the MRA remains low and the SVC still applies mainly to wired telecommunications terminals, with limited application to wireless/radio equipment. Although some additional products have been added to the SVC’s scope, many products are still not covered.

The EBC would, however, like to take the opportunity to thank MIC for removing the periodical field inspection requirement for 4G/5G mobile base stations. This is a positive move, and downsides should be minimum with improved remote monitoring technologies.

There are approximately 8.7 billion mobile phone subscriptions globally and 2.1 billion of these are 5G subscriptions. In Japan, which is considered a mature market characterised by advanced data services and the introduction of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and 5G, smartphone penetration is already at about 97% and is driving mobile broadband growth. Japan is promoting new wireless technologies for IoT, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and 5G. Advanced wireless technologies can facilitate innovative use of ICT, and contribute to emerging industries and economic growth. For handling this growing demand on mobile networks, Massive MIMO is deployed worldwide for utilizing precious spectrums and sites more efficiently. This is important for 5G and future beyond 5G networks. EBC supports and hopes that Japan will identify how the Massive MIMO ratio, which is clearly lower in Japan, can be increased in the future.

Applications used on smartphones, such as video and social networks, and machine-to-machine communication place different demands on the network. Japan has played an active role in efforts to harmonise the spectrums used for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) systems at the global level. It is important to note that MIC took on an important role for this goal at the World Radiocommunication Conferences 2019 (WRC-19) and 2023 (WRC-23), especially in relation to the identification of new harmonised spectrums for IMT. This would bring enormous benefits to the IMT industry and its customers by eliminating the need to develop local variations of new telecommunications equipment. The EBC strongly supports this work and hopes that Japan will continue to implement new spectrum bands according to the outcomes of WRC-19 and WRC-23 that are harmonised with other markets. Especially for the upper 6GHz band which was identified for IMT in WRC-23 for Region 1 including Europe, the EBC notes that the leading European companies in October 2024 sent an open letter to ask European Commission and European national administrations to make this band available for mobile service.

This area continues to be important for the telecoms industry, and after quite some development in 2018 to 2022, the situation has stabilised. However, the EBC continues to monitor the situation, also in regard to AI which has appeared as an important topic.