Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) opened a five-week public comment window on August 5, 2026, covering five draft measures that would rewrite parts of the Radio Law Enforcement Regulation and the Radio Station Licensing Procedure Regulation. The proceeding runs as case number 145210759 under the telecommunications category on the e-Gov public comment portal, with submissions due by September 8, postmark valid, and accepted only in Japanese.
The package follows a July 10 interim report from the Information and Communications Council, chaired by an NEC special advisor, on the direction of promoting effective spectrum use amid changes in the social environment. That report called for updating the mobile phone licensing system to match technological progress and more diverse usage needs, and MIC says the five drafts turn those recommendations into rule text.
| Item | Draft measure | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ministerial ordinance amending the Radio Law Enforcement Regulation and Radio Station Licensing Procedure Regulation | Radio Law Art. 27-2, Art. 27-6(3), Art. 39(1) |
| 2 | Notice amendment on technical-standard equivalence for foreign radio stations | Radio Station Licensing Procedure Regulation Art. 30-2(2)(vi) |
| 3 | Notice amendment on codes used in radio station filing documents | Radio Station Licensing Procedure Regulation |
| 4 | Notice amendment on interference-risk zones for specified frequency bands | Radio Law Enforcement Regulation Art. 15-2(2)(i-2) and (iii-2) |
| 5 | Directive amending Radio Law examination standards | Radio Law Art. 7; Administrative Procedure Act Art. 5(1) |
The most consequential change sits inside the draft directive amending the Radio Law's examination standards, one of the five items in the package. Under the current standard, a high-altitude base station operating in the 2,110-2,170 MHz band has to coordinate against interference only with space-operation-service stations engaged in rocket launches. The revised standard adds earth-exploration satellite services, space-research services, and a rocket-linked mobile-service category to that coordination list, so a licensee clears a wider set of satellite and launch operators before switching on, though the requirement still applies only to operators conducting rocket-launch operations.
The same redline text revises femtocell siting rules. Femtocells covered by two categories of the enforcement regulation, Article 15-2(2)(1) and (1-2), would be dropped from the current requirement that femtocell equipment sit indoors, a requirement that continues to bind other femtocells and specified land-mobile relay stations. The redline also removes the existing exception letting specified land-mobile relay stations with antenna power of 40 milliwatts or less sit outdoors. A companion provision in the same package would attach a new license condition to exactly those two femtocell categories: their licenses would state that stations using the 2,700-3,400 MHz band are not required to protect them from harmful interference.
MIC's release does not name a target date for finalizing the package. It says only that, after reviewing the comments submitted by September 8, the ministry will proceed swiftly with the procedures needed to amend the Radio Law Enforcement Regulation and the licensing rules. None of the five draft documents carries a promulgation number or effective date, leaving the comment deadline as the near-term marker for carriers, tower operators, and satellite-service coordinators tracking how Japan revises interference-coordination duties for high-altitude base stations.