New Player Eyes Japanese 3G Market

Fixed-line ISP Softbank is hatching plans to enter the Japanese 3G market as a service provider. According to reports in the Japanese press this morning, Softbank has asked the government to grant it access to the radio frequencies used by KDDI, Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo.

Masayoshi Son, Softbank’s president is quoted as saying that his company expects the government “Will allocate the bandwidth around next year and it will take about two years for us to prepare for the actual service.” The company has already filed a suit in the Japanese courts to stop the government from distributing more access on 800Mhz band, which it hopes to use.

Softbank argued that the plan favoured existing operators too much. Full story Here.