Greetings!, with the usual Midas-touch, Masayoshi Son's Softbank is creating a new 100Mbps national wireless network in Japan from the ashes of Japan's bankrupt 5th largest mobile phone operator Willcom.
Masayoshi Son's new company "Wireless City Planning Inc." has acquired the best assets of Willcom, which is under bankruptcy protection. To satisfy Japanese regulator requirements Softbank invests 33.3%, a further 33.3% comes from the investment fund Advantage Partners LLP, and five global base station makers will invest 6.7% each: LM Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens-Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei and ZTE.
For a number of reasons, including their relatively late entry into the market, foreign base station makers only have a relatively small share of Japan's very large and rapidly developing wireless base station market (for an analysis and statistics of Japan's base station market see our JCOMM-report). Foreign base station makers' investment into this new network operator is significant, but competition will be very severe.
Those foreign base station makers who invest appropriately in Japan, and adapt their global management structures to the necessities of Japan's large and exploding base station market - and associated service markets - will have a good chance to increase their (currently very small) market shares.
 
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