Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Rakuten Mobile has revealed that its 4G network now covers more than 80% of Japan’s population, and most of the remaining areas will gain service within the coming months.
“Rakuten Mobile continues to offer more attractive services for all customers and is working to further expand its customer base. At the same time, we are rapidly expanding our own network area so that users can experience the benefits of unlimited data usage,” stated Rakuten Mobile President Yoshihisa Yamada in a call with investors.
Rakuten now completes with the big three NTT Docomo, KDDI, and SoftBank networks, which were established much earlier.
As for its 5G service, Rakuten Mobile now has over 4.1 million applications for service, which is growing slowly. Rakuten’s 5G services are mainly limited to parts of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Hokkaido, Osaka, and Hyogo prefectures.
Rakuten plans to expand its 5G network as well, and it secured approval from Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in April to deploy in the 1.7 GHz band.