Expert Committee Held for Lowering Mobile Phone Charges in Japan

Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has started discussing lowering the rate for telephone fees. A meeting by experts has taken place and there were opinions which say the fee structure is confusing for consumers and needed to be improved. 

This expert meeting was held according to the instructions given by the prime minister, Shinzo Abe as he has promised to Japanese citizens that he will try to lower the rate of mobile phone using rates. The members are involved in this meeting including a professor from Meiji University who works as the leader for the meeting. 

In the meeting held on Monday, discussions were done with 3 topics.  The first topic was to provide a variety of services for different users.  For example, reasonable plan for some users who only use the telephones and data communication can be promoted.

The second one is to increase the number of "cheap smartphones" users. This can be done by introducing services with the low cost even though there are some limitations to the services.

And the last topic was to make users able to actually feel the lowering in the price of rates. Currently, the method of selling smartphones and services are complicated and it promotes customers to keep changing devices. In this selling method, consumers who do not change devices or upgrade services can not feel the lowering of the rates and it needs to be reconsidered.

NTT Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank are the 3 main mobile phone operators in Japan and all of them are cautious to the progress of the meeting and discussion.   

One of the main reasons for the major telecommunication companies for being prudence for lowering the rates is because these companies have invested a huge amount of money in developing the communication infrastructure. A total of 2 trillion yen has been spent by the 3 major companies in order to achieve providing convenience of high-speed communication. Japan is one of the fastest internet speed countries in the world.   

Now the companies have to consider how to reduce the burden for customers. Perhaps, investing in infrastructure can be done together by those companies  can be an idea to lower the cost of rates.