🛰️ If you picture satellites talking to each other by radio, that picture is out of date. NEC is planning a network of several hundred satellites linked by laser light, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on September 27, 2026. A Japanese test satellite was the first in the world to pull off a two-way laser link between satellites, about 20 years ago. Count the satellites, though, and Japan's plan sits an order of magnitude below Starlink. So why does Japan want a network of its own?

Radio needs permission, light doesn't

According to the Yomiuri, NEC's plan is to operate several hundred optical communication satellites as a single system at an altitude of about 1,000 km, with service starting in the 2030s. The fleet would grow step by step over several launches. Japan's existing satellite constellations (fleets of small satellites working together as one system) total only a dozen or so satellites, even counting those built for purposes other than communication. If the plan holds, that jumps by an order of magnitude.

Optical satellites trade data with laser beams, which can move far more data in the same time than radio. In NEC's own technical journal, the company explains that laser links between satellites need no frequency coordination, unlike radio, and make it easier to keep data from being intercepted.

Japan's Radio Act defines radio waves as electromagnetic waves up to 3 terahertz, and which frequencies each country may use is coordinated through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN agency. The more satellites there are, the harder it gets to keep their signals from colliding. In a March 2026 announcement, NEC named avoiding interference as a key reason light is favored for links between satellites.

NEC's network will not be light-only, though. The Yomiuri reports that it will also carry radio links, which is why NEC, through Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, filed plans with the ITU covering about 1,300 satellites.

But light can't get through clouds

Laser light has a weakness: clouds. A report on laser experiments between a satellite and a ground station by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) notes that clouds cut off the beam. The beam is also extremely narrow and travels in a straight line, so keeping it locked on a fast-moving target is hard. Between satellites in space, at least, there are no clouds.

NEC's technology demonstration satellite, due to launch in fiscal 2027, will carry optical transceivers alongside radio equipment for the Q/V band, a high-frequency slice of the spectrum known as millimeter waves. It will also talk to ground stations and collect data on how those radio signals travel. The setup reads like a test of a hybrid design: light between satellites, radio as well for the link to the ground.

Laser links are not new

NEC describes its network as "Japan's first optical communication satellite constellation." It may be a first for Japan, but the technology has been in use worldwide for more than 20 years.

Europe got the first laser link between satellites. In November 2001, the European Space Agency (ESA) sent data by laser from the French Earth observation satellite SPOT-4 to its geostationary satellite ARTEMIS. The first link that worked in both directions, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), was made by a Japanese satellite. In December 2005, JAXA's test satellite Kirari connected with that same ARTEMIS. In January 2025, JAXA and NEC announced they had linked the Earth observation satellite Daichi-4 with a relay satellite in geostationary orbit about 40,000 km away, at 1.8 gigabits per second, and delivered the data to the ground.

The company that scaled it up was SpaceX. In January 2024, one of its engineers said Starlink's satellites carried more than 9,000 lasers moving over 42 petabytes of data a day. Each link can run at 100 gigabits per second. Japan was in the leading pack on the technology. On scale, it fell far behind.

Is several hundred a lot?

By astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell's count, about 11,100 Starlink satellites were working as of September 2026. China's Guowang, run by the state-owned China Satellite Network Group (China SatNet), has about 13,000 satellites filed with the ITU. The European Union's IRIS² is planned at about 290 satellites, with service targeted by 2030.

Several hundred satellites will not catch Starlink or Guowang, and they are not meant to. The closer match is IRIS², which the EU says will strengthen its sovereignty, meaning the ability to decide for itself without leaning on others. NEC's plan is backed by the Japanese government through its Space Strategy Fund and its Economic Security Key Technology Program, and the Yomiuri says the goal is a network that does not depend on foreign providers. The thinking looks much the same.

Japan's big mobile carriers already rely on Starlink. KDDI launched a service connecting smartphones directly to Starlink satellites in April 2025, and NTT Docomo followed in April 2026 (our story on Docomo's service). According to the Yomiuri, fiber networks in Japan cover areas where 99% of the population lives, yet 40% of the country's land has no ground network. To fill that gap, two of the biggest carriers chose a single American company's network. The Yomiuri also points out that in the war in Ukraine, Starlink was used to fly drones and came to shape the course of the fighting.

The same company is sending light across the seabed

The same September, NEC's name also turned up at the bottom of the Atlantic. Meta announced Petal, a subsea cable linking the United States and France over about 7,000 km, with NEC handling everything from design to laying the cable (our story on Petal).

The timing is a coincidence, but the two projects are connected. On its website, NEC says it built its satellite laser terminals by bringing the optical technology from its subsea cables into space. Under the sea or in orbit, what NEC is selling is the ability to carry light over long distances.

What is settled, and what isn't

What NEC has announced itself stops at the demonstration satellite. It finished designing the onboard equipment in March 2026 and plans to launch in fiscal 2027. The satellite's bus, the base platform, will be an off-the-shelf Aries unit from US-based Apex Technology. NEC will also feed the results into research under the Economic Security Key Technology Program run by NEDO and the Space Strategy Fund project run by JAXA.

The scale of several hundred satellites, the 2030s start and the ITU filing for about 1,300 come from the Yomiuri report. The Japanese news site innovatopia notes that, as of September 27, NEC's public materials showed neither that scale nor the details of the filing. Total cost, the rocket, the final number of satellites and who the customers will be have not been disclosed either.

This is separate from Japan's Ministry of Defense satellite constellation (our earlier story). That contract went in December 2025 to a group led by Mitsubishi Electric for a network that gathers imagery, and NEC is not among the winning companies.

A "Japan-only network," then, starts with a test satellite built on an American platform. What owning it really means is less about making every part at home and more about who runs the network and who holds the power to switch it off.

When your phone has no signal on a mountain or out at sea, whose satellites are keeping you connected?

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