Feb 11, 2021
Many smartphone users are no doubt looking forward to next month, when Japan’s telecom giants will launch new monthly plans that are considerably cheaper than current deals.
But for the wider industry, it will be the dawn of a new price war.
With the three megacarriers NTT Docomo Inc., KDDI Corp. and SoftBank Corp. making bold new offers, smaller rivals known as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are likely to face an uphill battle.
MVNOs, which lease mobile networks from the major carriers, are often labeled budget SIM card providers because their advantage has been in low-cost plans, but the three carriers are dropping the cost of 20 gigabytes of monthly data to ¥2,980 as cheap as what MVNOs have offered.