Japan’s mobile service providers,  SOFTBANK and eAccess have entered into an agreement whereby SOFTBANK will become the sole parent company of eAccess and eAccess will become its wholly-owned subsidiary of SOFTBANK. with this agreement, companies expect to combine management resources effectively and efficiently, and accelerate the penetration of the mobile broadband service.

SOFTBANK will pay about 180 billion yen ($2.3 billion) for eAccess reports Bloomberg. The acquisition is expected to be completed by late February, 2013 if the Share Exchange is implemented with the approval at the general meeting of shareholders and other necessary procedures.

SOFTBANK MOBILE, a  consolidated subsidiary of SOFTBANK, and eAccess will  share mobile communications network resources.  SOFTBANK MOBILE will provide  eAccess with access to its 900 MHz network (Band8, operating band specified in 3GPP) and 2.1 GHz network (Band1, operating band specified in 3GPP), which will allow eAccess to provide the voice and data communications service in broader areas.  Meanwhile eAccess will provide SOFTBANK MOBILE with access to its 1.7 GHz (Band3, operating band specified in 3GPP) FDD LTE network for  the  data communications service, which will allow SOFTBANK MOBILE to use both 2.1 GHz and 1.7 GHz for its FDD LTE service.  

SOFTBANK MOBILE and eAccess will also conduct a study for the effective use of base station sites for the shared networks, and share, newly build or transfer base stations sites where appropriate, allowing SOFTBANK MOBILE and eAccess to expand their service coverage more quickly and to decrease capital expenditures and maintenance costs.

Companies aim to reduce costs by sharing eAccess’ backbone network for  the  mobile  communications and ADSL services, and the SOFTBANK Group’s backbone network.