SoftBank signs five-year deal to build Sceye HAPS fleet over Japan

SoftBank Corp has signed a five-year Master Services Agreement with US aerospace company Sceye to manufacture, launch and operate a fleet of High Altitude Platform Systems (HAPS) across Japan. The operator has set 2027 as its goal for commercial use of the stratospheric infrastructure.

The deal expands a partnership that produced the pair's first service trial in September, when a HAPS platform positioned over an area of Japan delivered stable voice and high-capacity data communications to ordinary smartphones. The vessel also supported an emergency alert messaging system during the test.

What will the fleet actually do?

Most of the initial fleet will provide mobile broadband across Japan, according to SoftBank. A subset of the platforms will do something more unusual: establish a Free Space Optical network in the stratosphere, beaming data between aircraft-scale stations floating roughly in the layer of the atmosphere where weather ends and long-haul flights cruise.

SoftBank frames the fleet as a key pillar of its ubiquitous network ambitions. The two companies say their work advances a shared vision for a 3D communications network that combines three layers:

• Terrestrial infrastructure on the ground
• Stratospheric HAPS platforms in the sky
• Satellites in orbit

The stated aims are broader than rural coverage. The partners list expanded reliable connectivity, communications support during disasters and enabling future applications across AI, IoT, aerial communications, edge computing and 6G.

That last item matters for context. HAPS has attracted attention in standards circles as a candidate component of 6G network architecture, where non-terrestrial layers would supplement towers and fiber. Japan, prone to earthquakes and typhoons that knock out ground networks, is a natural first market for connectivity that survives disasters — a point SoftBank's trial with emergency alert messaging was clearly built to prove.

What are the executives saying?

Sceye founder and CEO Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen said the recent trial demonstrated how the platform can connect directly into existing networks, and declared it was now "time to scale".

Masayuki Kamimura, senior director of SoftBank Corp's Ubiquitous Network Planning unit, went further on the commercial significance. The agreement, he said, "represents the commercialisation of HAPS".

Kamimura added that by combining the two companies' expertise, "we aim to create a resilient, three-dimensional communications network that seamlessly connects the ground, sky, and space, expanding connectivity, strengthening disaster preparedness, and enabling new possibilities in the 6G era".

Marketing versus contract

A word of calibration. A five-year master agreement to manufacture, launch and operate a fleet is a serious industrial commitment, not a memorandum of understanding. But the fleet size, launch cadence, coverage figures and pricing remain undisclosed, and no subscriber targets accompany the announcement.

What SoftBank has put on the record is concrete: a September trial that reached ordinary smartphones with voice, data and emergency alerts; a 2027 commercial target; and now a manufacturing contract with a named US partner. The gap between those facts and the full 3D network vision — AI, edge computing, 6G and all — is where engineering still has to happen.

The September test showed the platform works. The next milestone SoftBank has committed to is 2027, when the fleet is due to move from stratospheric experiment to paying service.