Cellular Joy
Hihi!Today I'd like to talk about a topic we've had a few questions about, cell phones!
There are three main cellular phone companies in Japan. I'll go through the pros and cons of each.
AU
This is run by the phone company KDDI. AU has some great features and seem to be focusing currently on listening to music and watching television by phone. Unfortunately, they are not very foreigner friendly. Most of their phones are not bilingual and they do not have English customer service. As well, their mobile web, called EZ Web, does not feature sites or services in English.
Softbank
This is a company who has gone through a lot changes. Beginning as the company J-Phone it was later bought by Vodafone. Under Vodafone they specialized in complete bilingual services which made it the easy choice for any foreigner. Vodafone's phone models, unfortunately, weren't anything special at the beginning but had been getting better in recent months. Other than that, the only real complaint is the lack of reception in many areas. In the recent weeks Vodafone was bought by Softbank, who works closely with Yahoo!. It will be interesting to see what developments and changes theare made with their new look.
DoCoMo
This is run by the largest phone company in Japan, NTT. They focus on amazingly designed phones with the features to match. Mobile internet and gaming are also their focuses. They do have an English customer center, however, apart from at the airport, they rarely have English personnel in their shops. Instead, they use their call center staff as interpreters to ensure the conversation goes smoothly.
So, picking that cell phone company in Japan depends what you are looking for. If you are Japanese able or have a Japanese friend willing to help, the best and cheapest way to find a cell phone is to shop around the small cell phone vendor shops on the street instead of going straight to Company A, B or C. The vendors get paid based on contracts signed so can afford to give the phone away dirt cheap. If you shop around you could even find that you desired phone is being offered for free to sign a year contract. If you decide to break that contract before the year is up, you'll only generally incur a 3000-5000 yen fee. That's better than most countries.
A newcoming feature is the ability to take your phone number with you even though you change companies. This is expected to cause more competition between the mobile phone companies and may even mean a cheaper break for its customers. Here's hoping.
To start you'll need your alien id, passport, bank info (for payment), address and alternate phone number. You will usually be required to have at least 6 months to one year left on your visa. Some places even restrict the type of visas they will accept. It's a pain isn't it? Good news is that once you're in, the visa check will be unnecessary after that if you want to upgrade to the new phone model later on.
Feel free to post any of your cell phone yays and woes here. And we always welcome questions.
posted by Fudocom - Rei @ 6:05 PM
2 Comments:
Interesting but not 100% accurate. I have been using au for about seven years, and all of the phones have had bi-lingual capability. Reception is by far the best -- my DoCoMo friends are always complaining.
I can access Yahoo in English, including news and e-mail,with my au phone. Have also been able to access the Guardian, Google, AFP, BBC, etc.
Softbank charges low rates and allows you to pay for a handset over 24 months. However, among mobile providers, Softbank has the least number of transmitters (KDDI has the most).
Hi Daniel!
Sorry for the late reply. But thank you for your comment.
Whoo this post was from a while back, but I've gone through my original notes.
AU does have bilingual capability but noticeably the possible worst selection of phones. They're slowly improving.
At the time that I wrote this, Softbank had just taken over Vodafone and it wasn't certain what changes they would make to the existing service.
As for reception, this is a debatable point. DoCoMo actually has two networks, Mova and Foma. Mova has much better reception coverage than Foma, however, Foma has the better selection of phones and is therefore probably the more popular choice. What many people don't know is that should they be on the less covered Foma network and are experiencing problems with reception, they can choose an additional option (for a small fee of course) to have their phone automatically switch to the Mova network when out of the Foma range. I tried this service over aa period of several months. It was excellent in places I had had troubles with AU and Vodafone previously. Should someone have Mova or the Mova/Foma combination I think this would much beat the AU networks reception areas. This is by my own testing and a rough comparison of the coverage maps of each company. But, nevertheless, I think you should go for a phone and price plan that suits you. If you have problems with reception in common places like your home, etc, changing companies is always the easy solution.
Thank you Daniel!
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