5G Adoption and Expansion in Japan

The article discusses how Rakuten, a Japanese E-commerce group and wireless carrier, will partner with information technology group NEC to install about 16,000 low-cost 5G base stations across the country over five years. 5G is a relatively new technology that is supposed to offer much faster wireless speeds than the current 4G standard. Rakuten will supply the cloud technology while NEC supplies the wireless units, hoping to install the network by the end of 2024.

 I think the significant part of this news is that both Rakuten and NEC are both Japanese companies, which makes this move hurt the ever expansive reach of China's Huawei Technologies. Huawei already does provide equipment for 5G networking, but Rakuten has opted for a domestic supplier to build out its network. Moreover, in a separate move, the Japanese company SoftBank Corp. has also passed over Huawei Technologies when looking to purchase 5G base stations, and instead bought them from Ericson and Nokia, which are Swedish and Finnish companies respectively. The fact that these two wireless carrier companies have passed over the giant Chinese company Huawei, which no doubt has much to offer concerning 5G technologies, is no coincidence. SoftBank has alaways used base stations from Ericson, Nokia, and Huawei, so this move was seen as significant.

This follows pressure from the US to effectively ban companies from using Huawei networking equipment in 2012. More recently the US has added Huawei to a security list, banning them from accessing US communications network. According to another article, Japan and other US allies are under pressure to keep Huawei out of 5G wireless networks. SoftBank Chief Technology Officer Junichi Miyakawa said in April that the company "would comply with the government's wishes", showing that Japan was indeed pressuring SoftBank to avoid working with Huawei.

In a bigger geopolitical context, I'm not sure how much this affects Japan-China relations, and how much the Chinese government cares about this move. Certainly the move away from Huawei is due to its closeness with the Chinese government and the potential for spying or security breaches. I'd imagine that China is not too happy about having their largest networking company be shunned by both US and Japanese companies. However, Huawei is still the #1 telecom company and the #2 smartphone provider, being especially popular in Asian countries including Japan, so I don't see the company losing its influence anytime soon. These recent decisions by SoftBank and Rakuten just seem to push Huawei's influence away from the development of 5G network in Japan.

Additional Articles:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Huawei-crackdown/Huawei-excluded-from-SoftBank-s-5G-network

https://www.cnet.com/news/huawei-ban-full-timeline-on-how-and-why-its-phones-are-under-fire/