This piece presents Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga’s detailed argument on the high and opaque cost of mobile phone services, the oligopolistic structure of Japan’s three major carriers, and the institutional reforms aimed at lowering prices.
It also highlights the steady achievements of the Abe administration in diplomacy and security, including the rebuilding of Japan-U.S. relations, the recovery of Japan-China ties, and Japan’s growing role in Middle Eastern diplomacy, underscoring the importance of politics that protects Japan’s national interest.

2019-07-10
Mobile phone communication charges in Japan are about twice the OECD average, and are also at a high level compared with other major countries.
Furthermore, contract terms are complex and difficult to understand.
The following is an article by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, published in the August issue of the monthly magazine Hanada under the title, “Japan Cannot Be Left to the Opposition Alliance.”
Not only all Japanese citizens, but people throughout the world as well, ought to read it.
Mobile Phone Charges Are High and Opaque.
To realize what should be only natural for the people.
Another issue I have been tackling is mobile phone charges.
Today, mobile phones are an era of one per person and one of the lifelines, yet communication costs in household expenditures have increased by about 40 percent over the past ten years despite deflation, putting pressure on household finances.
And yet, the current reality is an oligopoly in which the three major companies control 90 percent of the market, and it is difficult to say that competition is functioning.
Mobile phone communication charges in Japan are about twice the OECD average, and are also at a high level compared with other major countries.
Furthermore, contract terms are complex and difficult to understand.
Bundled sales of communications and devices, “two-year lock-ins” and “four-year lock-ins,” make it difficult for people to judge easily whether services and charges are commensurate, and one often hears that procedures can take half a day.
In such a situation, the three major companies are earning profits of 700 to 800 billion yen from their mobile phone businesses, with profit margins reaching as high as 20 percent.
For reference, the profit margin across all industries is about 6 percent.
In the ranking of operating profits among listed companies, four of the top ten were telecommunications operators.
What is important is that mobile phone services are provided through use of the “public airwaves,” which are a national asset belonging to the people.
Rather than obtaining excessive profits from this business, operators should develop their businesses while returning profits to users.
With that in mind, I have continued to speak out on mobile phones.
It is the responsibility of the government to establish a system in which competition functions properly among operators.
In May, the revised Telecommunications Business Act was enacted.
It will come into force this autumn, and by thoroughly separating communication charges from handset prices, users will be able to compare and choose communication charges and handset prices independently, and I expect that progress in competition will lower both communication charges and handset prices.
We will work firmly so that charges and services that are easy for users to understand and accept can be realized.
The Steady Results of Abe Diplomacy.
Alongside economic revitalization, another important pillar is the rebuilding of diplomacy and security.
The Prime Minister made clear, as a matter of strategy, his determination to place the highest priority on Japan-U.S. relations, and he has worked to realize a functioning Japan-U.S. alliance.
For Japan, relations with China are also important.
With the 40th anniversary of the Japan-China Peace and Friendship Treaty as a milestone, we aimed to restore a relationship of friendship and cooperation, and in fact we have done exactly that.
It can be said that Japan-China relations have fully entered a trajectory of recovery.
Furthermore, Prime Minister Abe visited Iran beginning on June 12, and in talks with Iran’s leaders, he was able to elicit statements that “we do not want war” and that they would “not manufacture, possess, or use nuclear weapons.”
It was previously unimaginable that Japan would play so great a role in the peace and security of the Middle East.
The reason we placed “Protect the national interest through strong diplomacy and defense” at the very beginning of our House of Councillors election pledges was also because we judged that this had become an era in which cooperation with the international community would have a major impact on Japan’s economy and the lives of its citizens.
Many Japanese companies have also expanded overseas, and the importance of coordination with the international community is increasing.
There was also reporting that criticized President Trump’s recent visit to Japan as “excessive hospitality,” but from the standpoint of Japan’s national interest, is it not most desirable to value a relationship in which we can immediately contact the president of the country possessing the world’s number one economic power and security power?
After the Abe administration took office in December 2012, it sought a prime ministerial visit to the United States in January of the following year, but the Obama administration politely turned it down and the visit was postponed until February.
Moreover, the meeting time initially proposed by the American side was only 45 minutes.
For the prime minister of an allied country to come to the United States and be granted only 45 minutes.
I believe that was also because former Prime Minister Hatoyama’s statement of “at least outside the prefecture” had lingering effects, and Japan was not trusted at all.
During the Democratic Party administration, Japan-U.S. relations deteriorated steadily, and as if seeing through that weakness, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Russian President Medvedev each made their first landings on Takeshima and the Northern Territories.
There was also an incident in which a Chinese fishing boat rammed a Japan Coast Guard patrol vessel within our territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands, and although the captain was arrested, he was released after Japan bowed to intimidation by the Chinese government.
To be continued.