Japanese TD-LTE Rare Bands

Recently I got an unexpected request from a European company. “We need a mobile phone from a Japanese operator X or Y. It needs to be brand Z - the only one available globally - and SIM-free. Oh, one more thing: it must be able to open the USB Settings menu!”. While I’ve asked my staff in my earlier companies many times and in several APAC countries to act on similar internal requests, I’ve never done it by myself. So my first “intelligent” question was the one I hate most:  “why?”. The answer was equally obvious: “We have a potential customer for our T&M system and they use the same Band 42 as is only used in Japan.”

OK, so this company is making mobile network measurement systems and uses a commercial mobile as the radio interface. I’m familiar with that situation. Their customer will buy their product if they can make their product to work with their customer’s network under construction. Thus, the mobile needs to have the same TD-LTE frequency band - in this case B42 - but work with their customer’s SIM card. Piece of cake, except. Japanese operators are not selling phones without a two year contract. This European company doesn’t need a Japanese mobile contract nor pay for it for two years. Neither do I.

Suddenly I started to appreciate even more than before my engineering staff in my earlier companies. For them this was every-now-and-then work, for me the first time 😱! While I knew the process, still I felt like Madonna too-many-years-ago, “Like a Virgin”. Well, that’s why I’m here for - to learn new tricks - so let’s get to it! First, where can I get Japanese operator branded mobiles but SIM-free? Once that was cleared, then how to test them with my competing operator’s SIM and see if the required USB Settings menu pops open (this company must have had earlier experiences…). You see, these SIM-unlocked phones without contracts are not sold in wholesale markets but one-at-a-time by separate small companies or individuals. Accordingly, testing them is not so easy when all sellers operate around Tokyo metropolitan area, each an hour away from my desk. Eventually I made it and now I know how to do it without the pain and only with the pleasure.

 However, I wanted to learn something about this experience. I started to wonder how mobiles used commercially in the Japanese market could be used for similar overseas companies? There are a multitude of prototypes, enhancements and new products in development and needing locally unavailable mobiles for testing the product in progress and/or as a module in the final product. I compared the Japanese TD-LTE bands already in commercial use - thus, mobiles are available in the Japanese market - and found two specific bands that I’m calling “Japanese TD-LTE Rare Bands”: B42 (3,500 MHz) and B28 (700 MHz).

The finding stunned me: B42 deployment provides especially European telecoms product companies remarkable new market opportunities. First of all, the present B42 networks in North America are all in Canada and there won’t be any new ones. Latin American networks are for Brazil and Chile - Brazil being the most lucrative Latin American markets for any company. Almost all of the African networks are in Nigeria - again the African country you want to be in business.

Europeans also have a big coming market in their backyard. On top of the only existing UK network, a whopping 19 B42 networks are being planned! For B28 the situation is similar if you are not in those target markets yet. Out of the 8 operating networks most are in Taiwan and Philippines, the 14 in Latin America are in Brazil, Chile, Peru and Panama. The three new ones will be dispersed around Africa.

But you need those commercial mobiles to access these promised lands. Where from can you get  such good quality products that make your prototype work perfectly and your product perform better than the rest? Here from Japan! Not made by Japanese companies but made for the Japanese market, accepting only top quality. The phones are here - where’s your business 😄.

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Mika Mäkinen is the founder of mikAdvance, a consultancy helping foreign HiTech B2B companies to establish business and sales channels in North East Asia. mikAdvance’s clients are typically providing high-end, hardware-based solutions for mobile communications industry in the global market and are looking for cost efficient sales expansion in the demanding APAC markets.

Mika has been involved in APAC business since 1994, first in heavy machinery and the past 15 years in ICT businesses. He’s been in charge of various parts of APAC, having done most of his business in Japan (18 years resident), Korea (2 years resident), China (bi-monthly tours) and Taiwan (quarterly tours). Also as a former President of the Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Japan (FCCJ) and a member of Board of Governors of the European (EU) Chamber of Commerce in Japan, he has become a bridge-builder between the Eastern and Western business cultures and social networks.