Japan appears to be leveraging the Quad to pursue its ambitions of promoting domestic 5G network operators.
5G, referred to in Quad lingo as “advanced communications” and a “critical and emerging technology,” is one of a handful of policy initiatives that feature at all of the Quad-five leaders’ summits, along with issues such as health and clean energy initiatives. Tokyo has led the group in its consistent focus on 5G as a critical technology.
why?
Four companies currently dominate 5G network technology. In Europe, Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia are the trusted suppliers to many of the Western world’s 5G networks. The competition they face is China’s Huawei and ZTE. These four companies (the so-called “corporate quad”), along with South Korea’s Samsung’s small share, control more than 95% of the global 5G network equipment market.
Japan, through the Quad and other diplomatic channels, is seeking to cultivate its own national 5G leadership. Equipment makers NEC and Fujitsu, as well as mobile network operator Rakuten, are each working to promote open radio access network (open RAN) technology that they and the Japanese government believe will enable them to compete in a congested 5G market.
Japan has been the Quad’s driving force on this issue.
Open RAN is an alternative architecture to what is called last mile connectivity in telecommunications networks. This is essentially the part that connects customers to a broader global system. Traditional RAN networks require the same equipment vendor to provide the complete suite of hardware and software. This makes it very difficult to enter the traditional RAN equipment market because aspiring vendors would have to develop an end-to-end solution at huge expense. Open RAN, a distributed network architecture, is designed to allow multiple vendors to provide individual components for the same network. For example, antennas from Fujitsu will work with software from Rakuten and base stations from NEC. So companies can focus on developing specific components instead of the entire RAN network.
The Japanese government, recognizing the potential that Open RAN can create for domestic companies, has repeatedly highlighted the technology in Quad meetings and statements.
For example, at the 2023 G7 summit held on the sidelines of the Hiroshima summit, the four member states announced they would partner with Palau to design, implement and operationalize the introduction of open RAN capabilities in a project to modernize Palau’s national mobile network, with the goal of “enabling greater vendor choice.”
What the statement is really saying by “vendor choice” is that Quad leaders want new options, preferably from within their own countries.
Through the Quad, Japan hopes to encourage other countries to adopt the technology by piloting open RAN kits. Quad leaders also released an Open RAN Security Report, commissioned and funded by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and prepared in collaboration with Japanese industry partners, including mobile network operators. The report was predictably positive. Refuting criticism that open RAN is less secure than fully integrated traditional RAN networks, the report said the risks are not significantly different.
Japanese companies are eager to take advantage of government support. At the 2024 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Japan’s largest telecommunications operator NTT Docomo and technology company NEC announced a joint venture to expand open RAN business with a focus on Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The joint venture will launch international trials of open RAN in three locations: Singapore, the Philippines and Qatar. The first trial in the Philippines will be partly funded by the Japanese government, and construction is expected to begin within the next few months. Meanwhile, in Japan, Rakuten is one of the first companies in the world to deploy an open RAN network.
The push for Open RAN in the Quad is not new: In 2022, the group announced it would “improve interoperability and security by signing a new memorandum of cooperation on 5G supplier diversification and Open RAN.” Similarly, at the first Quad summit in 2021, the leaders agreed to “support 5G deployment and diversification,” primarily through Open RAN.
Outside of the Quad, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has promoted 5G/Open RAN technologies in several prominent international speeches.
For much of the time, Japan has been the driving force behind the Quad on this issue, and while there are several US companies, such as Mavenir, that have tried to promote themselves through actions similar to those of Tokyo, Japan has remained the leader.
It remains to be seen whether Japan will be successful in promoting its own champions through the quad, but Tokyo shows no signs of giving up.
