Japan: SoftBank to acquire EMOBILE.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Japan: SoftBank to acquire EMOBILE.

Japan’s Softbank is to acquire smaller rival EMOBILE in a deal set to establish it as the country’s second-largest mobile operator behind NTT Docomo.

Softbank is to acquire JPY180.2 billion (US$2.3 billion) of stock in eAccess, the firm behind mobile broadband specialist EMOBILE.

According to Reuters, the JPY52,000 per share deal represents a premium of more than three times eAccess' closing price of JPY15,070 on Friday.

“We are paying more than triple the current trading price of eAccess because the benefits come from the company's existing customer base,” Softbank Mobile’s charismatic founder Masayoshi Son told reporters today. “We do not think our shareholders will view this as a bad tie-up at all."

It is estimating total synergies of JPY360 billion, made up of customer base expansion (JPY200 billion), network sharing (JPY110 billion) and “other management efficiencies” (JPY50 billion).

The deal will also see Softbank inherit valuable new spectrum to support both its 4G rollout and major new devices such as the iPhone 5.

It noted that the combination of EMOBILE’s 10,000 base stations at 1.7GHz with its existing 20,000 base stations at 2.1GHz would give it an estate of 30,000 “LTE base stations available for the iPhone 5.”

Softbank says it had 34.9 million subscribers at end-August, while EMOBILE had 4.2 million. The combination of the two would give the expanded firm 39.1 million – a 28.8 percent market share - enough to surpass KDDI on 35.9 million (26.5 percent). Market leader Docomo has 60.6 million subscribers, a 44.7 percent share. 

LTE: Japan: EMOBILE has launched the second LTE network in the country.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

LTE: Japan: EMOBILE has launched the second LTE network in the country.

Japanese operator EMOBILE has launched the second LTE network in the country. Based on FDD-LTE, the network offers download speeds of up to 75Mb/s and upload speeds of up to 25Mb/s in some areas.

The operator plans to cover 99 percent of the population in Japan’s major cities – such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka - by the end of June, before extending coverage further. By the end of March, the company aims for the network to reach 40 percent of the total population, rising to 70 percent a year later.

The company will initially offer two LTE-capable Wi-Fi routers and a USB stick capable of connecting to the network.

EMOBILE joins Japan number one NTT Docomo in providing LTE services to consumers with the latter launching its Xi network in December 2010. Fellow operator SoftBank meanwhile started to offer high-speed wireless broadband services in February using an evolution of Japan’s PHS cordless network, called AXGP. SoftBank said the technology is very close fo TD-LTE and is capable of download speeds of up to 76Mb/s.