Japan attack on wireless 'oligopoly' awkward for SoftBank's US plans

For Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, who wants to build the world's largest mobile Internet company, criticism of his operations from regulators in his home market could not come at a worse time.

The feisty entrepreneur is lobbying skeptical Washington officials to let him buy a second US mobile operator, saying he would help to break up a cozy US wireless oligopoly.

Son says he is an outsider who stirred up a price battle that benefited consumers after he took over Vodafone's failing Japanese operation in 2007. So it must be galling to hear regulators in Tokyo chide his SoftBank Corp, along with NTT DoCoMo, Japan's mobile industry leader, and No.2 KDDI Corp, for lack of competition in the domestic smartphone market.

"You could say the mobile market is an oligopoly of the three big companies," Communications Minister Yoshitaka Shindo said at a regular news conference in April. His ministry is preparing long-term proposals to bring lower prices and faster services, including fostering growth of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), cut-rate providers that lease network access from the big carriers.

The sniping will not help Son's plans to acquire T-Mobile US.