Type approval certification for telecom and Radio Frequency (RF) products in Japan is managed by the “Ministry for Internal Affairs and Communication” or MIC. Before 2024, people might know MIC as “Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post, and Telecommunication” or MPHPT. MPHPT is the result of merger between three institutions, which are “Ministry of Post and Telecommunications”, “Ministry of Home Affairs”, and “Management and Coordination Agency”.
The main responsibility of MIC is supervising the administration system, managing elections, local government, post, telecommunications, and governmental statistic. Specifically for telecom sector, one of MIC’s roles is setting up the certification rules. As the rule maker, MIC continuously creates rules for the new technologies as well as performing update the rules of existing technologies. This is done to catch up with recent technological updates, especially because Japan is one of the countries with high innovation levels.
And then, MIC is also responsible to manage its internal affairs with Registered certification bodies (RCB) and external affairs by doing MRA. Typically, in type approval certification process MIC doesn’t do their own test or issue their certificate. For those tasks, MIC appoint in-country Registered certification bodies (RCB) to do the test and issue Japan type approval certificate. Besides appointing RCB, MIC also maintains Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) with other countries. So, test report or certificate issued by Japanese institution can be accepted in other countries and vice versa.
Lastly, MIC also has supervision function. As part of their supervision to Japan Type Approval Certificate, MIC conduct surveillance to the products sold or used within the territory of Japan. Usually, this this surveillance activity, it’s conducted through market surveillance scheme. From here, whenever found an uncomely product, they are also responsible to apply penalties. Therefore, if we want to sell or distribute our telecom of RF product in Japan, we need to make sure that the product already has Japan Type Approval Certificate from MIC.
Why We Care
When we’re about to export or sell our product to overseas, usually there will be compliance certificate required to state that the product already comply to that country’s requirements. However, knowing what certification is required for our product is usually difficult for some people. This happens especially when the target country has multiple certifications scheme, or where one product can be a subject of several certifications. Therefore, as importer, distributor, or manufacturer, it is important to do research and analysis of which institution is responsible to issue the compliance certificate of their products. So, they can make sure that that the product has obtain required certification before being exported or distributed. This is important to avoid sanction of distributing or selling uncertified and potentially-harming products.