6G race begins U.S. and Japan to invest $4.5 billion against mainland China

The U.S. and Japan have formed a common front to jointly invest in 6G technology.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga agreed at the summit to jointly invest $4.5 billion in the development of “6G,” a next-generation mobile communications technology.

The Nikkei News reported that according to a document released by the U.S. and Japanese leaders after the meeting, the two countries will invest the money in research, development, testing and deployment of secure networks, as well as advanced information and communication technologies, “with the U.S. having committed $2.5 billion and Japan $2 billion.

The two sides are also pursuing a “secure and open” 5G network, which covers the Open Network Architecture (O-RAN), showing that the U.S. and Japanese leaders intend to build an alternative to the communications network led by mainland China.

At present, Huawei, ZTE (ZTE) and other land-based enterprises in the global market share of about 40%, plus Ericsson (Ericsson), Nokia (Nokia), Samsung Electronics and other telecommunications equipment big names, including 90% of the market share. In contrast, the market share of U.S. companies and Japanese companies are lagging behind.

However, the U.S. company Qualcomm (Qualcomm) has about 10% of the 5G patents, is the industry leader, and Huawei almost, but the largest Japanese telecom provider NTT Docomo has only 6% of the 5G patents.

In order to avoid making the same mistake, the Japanese government decided to participate in international affairs at the early stage of 6G development, and strive for Japan’s market share of 6G patents to reach 10%, and this is the goal set by the Japanese industry, government and academia at the end of last year.

Japan believes that the key is to set global standards for the development of next-generation mobile communications technology. Therefore, cooperation with the United States will help this.

One of the goals of this document is that the U.S.-Japan cooperation in the field of communications, but also to expand to other countries to promote a secure way of communication, and this should help to develop global standards, and thus counterbalance China.