Rakuten Group, the Japanese internet and mobile conglomerate, said on Monday 9 November 2026 that it will set up a joint venture this month with AST SpaceMobile, a US satellite manufacturer, to create a satellite communications network in Japan by the end of March 2029. The new company, Rakuten AST Inc., is backed by Japanese government subsidies and is positioned by Rakuten as a counterweight to Starlink, the satellite service run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, according to Kyodo News as carried by The Mainichi.
The nearest milestone comes much sooner. In a project separate from the joint venture, Rakuten and AST plan to begin a trial service connecting AST satellites with ordinary smartphones by the end of 2026, the same report says.
Both efforts rest on direct-to-device (D2D) satellite internet: satellite internet delivered straight to a phone by spacecraft that behave like orbiting mobile base stations, with no dish, no extra SIM and no new handset.
Key facts
- Rakuten, already an investor in AST SpaceMobile, will hold 51% of the voting rights in Rakuten AST Inc., The Mainichi reported.
- The venture will use AST’s BlueBird low-Earth orbit satellites on midband spectrum, with a start date of March 2029, according to Light Reading.
- Japan’s government has decided to provide up to 148 billion yen over three years, per The Mainichi; Light Reading puts the grants from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) at around $1 billion.
- The service is aimed at keeping phones connected if base stations are damaged in a disaster, and at covering remote islands and mountainous areas, The Mainichi reported.
- Japan’s three communications giants — NTT Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank — all use Starlink, according to The Mainichi.
Why it matters
The Mainichi reports that the government is backing the project to reduce dependence on SpaceX from an economic security perspective, and that Rakuten wants an autonomously operated and managed service. “The satellite will be Japanese, while Rakuten will be responsible for its management and operation,” chairman and president Hiroshi Mikitani said at a Tokyo press conference, according to The Mainichi.
That ambition is aimed at a market SpaceX already dominates. Tech Times reports that KDDI’s au Starlink Direct, which it describes as the first service of its kind in Asia, passed 4 million users by April 2026, a year after launch, and that NTT Docomo and SoftBank both activated similar Starlink-based services in April 2026. Japan is therefore SpaceX’s largest direct-to-device base in Asia, and the state is now paying a fourth operator to build an alternative to it — one that, on the spectrum position set out below, the three incumbents cannot simply copy. As this site reported on 10 November, India split over who holds the switch on a foreign-run network.
Spectrum and satellites
Tech Times reports that a MIC advisory council subcommittee formally approved use of the 700 MHz band for direct satellite-to-device communications on 24 June 2026, and that Rakuten Mobile is the only one of Japan’s four mobile network operators holding 700 MHz, which it received in October 2023 and launched terrestrial service on in June 2024. Starlink’s direct-to-device service in Japan, it says, runs on KDDI’s 850 MHz and higher-frequency bands.
On that basis Tech Times argues that KDDI, NTT Docomo and SoftBank cannot swap Starlink for AST and claim the same spectrum position. Light Reading, by contrast, describes the joint venture’s service as using midband spectrum. SpaceX is strengthening its own hand elsewhere: as this site reported on 7 November, it bought 800 MHz of spectrum and won clearance for up to 15,000 satellites for its mobile push.
Light Reading’s comparison of the two constellations:
- Design aim: AST optimised to support cellular; Starlink designed primarily for broadband.
- Antenna size: AST around 2,400 square feet (223 square metres), which the company says are the world’s largest phased array antennas; Starlink roughly 65 square feet.
- Altitude: AST 505-590km and 715-740km; Starlink around 330km and 490km.
- In orbit: AST 13 satellites, including one test craft and five first-generation units; Starlink about 12,000.
AST’s five first-generation satellites deliver peak rates of 100 Mbit/s, with Block 2 satellites to double throughput, according to Light Reading. The company is aiming for at least 45-60 satellites to cover key markets in North America, Asia and Europe, and says it has more than 60 operator partners including AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone and Bell Canada. No African operators are named in any of the source reports.
SpaceX, Light Reading adds, plans to introduce direct-to-cell capability with next-generation V2 satellites, just approved by the US Federal Communications Commission, with the first expected to launch in 2027. Its existing D2D rollout is uneven: in the UK, this site reported on 11 November that BT says its Starlink direct-to-device service is ready but unlaunched.
How Japan got here
Tech Times traces the practical case for J-LEO — the government’s programme for a domestically owned low-Earth-orbit network — to the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture on 1 January 2024, killing more than 240 people and severing terrestrial communications. Responders restored connectivity using Starlink terminals, and Tech Times says the episode was not lost on Japan’s economic security planners. It compares the programme to Japan’s domestically operated GPS augmentation constellation, the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System.
MIC concluded the J-LEO tender in June 2026, selecting Rakuten Mobile over a competing KDDI-SpaceX consortium, Tech Times reports. The programme is designated an economic security priority under Japan’s 2022 Economic Security Act framework and requires fully private Japanese ownership and domestic operations; Tech Times describes the commitment as the largest single-nation investment in sovereign low-Earth-orbit satellite broadband to date.
Its July 2026 account differs from this week’s in two respects, and the November figures are the current ones. Tech Times then expected limited commercial service in late 2026 with broader nationwide coverage in fiscal 2027, where both November reports give March 2029; it also described an equal-stakes joint venture, where The Mainichi reports Rakuten holding 51% of voting rights.
Beyond the joint venture
Light Reading reports that on the same day, NTT and subsidiary NTT DoCoMo Business signed a memorandum of understanding with the Development Bank of Japan, banking group MUFG and satellite and defence firm Mitsubishi Electric. The group will examine whether services enabled by a “mega-constellation” can be commercialised, including communications, Earth observation, satellite positioning, navigation and timing, and space data centres.
Yahoo Finance, citing Simply Wall St, noted in July 2026 that AST SpaceMobile shares traded at $85.13 against a $81.47 analyst price target and that the company remains loss-making, with the stock down 28% over the preceding month. Tech Times reported the shares rose 21.4% on Monday 29 June 2026 as the subsidy decision emerged.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will users need a special handset or dish for AST’s service?
Tech Times reports the service runs on 3GPP Non-Terrestrial Network standards, specifically the Release 19 L- and S-band radio specifications already built into the baseband chipsets of most modern smartphones. On that basis it says no hardware modification, firmware update, extra SIM card or rooftop dish is needed, and a phone sees the satellite as it would a terrestrial LTE or 5G base station.
Why is AST SpaceMobile building its own rocket?
Light Reading reports that one reason AST’s deployment is bottlenecked is limited available space on launch vehicles, even though the company says it has agreements to deploy more than 100 satellites. AST has announced it is developing a 20-ton rocket called Blacklift, with the first commercial launch expected in late 2028.
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