Japan Lagging Behind in 5G Accelerates 6G Race... Collaborates with Finland

Photo by Nikkei Asia

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] Japan, which lost its leadership in the 5th generation mobile communication (5G) sector to countries like South Korea, China, and the United States, is aiming for a comeback in the 6G market expected to be commercialized around 2030.

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun on the 8th, Japan's "Beyond 5G Promotion Consortium" has decided to collaborate with the industry-academic organization "6G Flagship," which includes Finland's University of Oulu, in the 6G field.

To this end, they have signed an agreement for joint 6G research, establishing a close cooperative system from the research stage to develop standard specifications.

This agreement is scheduled to be officially announced at the 2021 Global Digital Summit hosted by this newspaper and Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

On the Finnish side, the global telecommunications equipment company Nokia is participating in this agreement, while on the Japanese side, major telecommunications-related companies such as the University of Tokyo, NTT, NTT Docomo, KDDI, SoftBank, and Rakuten Mobile are all involved.

Both sides are also discussing cooperation with U.S. 6G-related organizations that include telecommunications equipment company Cisco Systems and semiconductor company Intel.

The newspaper pointed out that Japan is lagging behind in the global competition for 5G commercial services, noting that in terms of essential patent holdings for 5G, Japanese companies are trailing behind U.S. Qualcomm and South Korean Samsung Electronics.

Because of this, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which oversees telecommunications policy in Japan, has set a goal to increase the domestic industry's share of 6G-related patents to over 10% and the share of facilities and software to over 30%, the newspaper reported.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.