Lionel Sujay Vailshery
Research expert covering cloud computing and emerging tech industries
5G in Japan - statistics and facts
Commercial fifth-generation (5G) mobile phone services were introduced to the Japanese market in March 2020, when Japan’s longstanding major mobile carriers NTT Docomo, KDDI, and SoftBank started the rollout of their respective 5G networks. Rakuten Mobile, which became the country’s fourth major carrier in 2020, followed in September of that year. The network deployment of Japan’s mobile carriers initially focused on urban areas and highly frequented places, aiming for a coverage of 90 percent of the population by 2025. In early 2022 it was reported that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), after consulting with the operators, had changed the plan to reach a coverage of 95 percent of the population by March 2024 and a coverage of 99 percent of the population by 2031, which indicated the importance attributed to the technology by the Japanese government. The number of 5G subscriptions in Japan strongly increased after the rollout, reaching about 69.8 million subscriptions by March 2023.
