Sunday, September 6, 2009

NTT Docomo

It looks like one of Japan's most popular cell phone service providers, NTT Docomo, is looking to expand the services they offer in the US. As a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, they would use existing infrastructure, most likely that of AT&T or T-Mobile. Many hope that NTT Docomo will pick up the iPhone in the US and offer much more reasonable rates.

After doing a bit of research, I was somewhat surprised to see that Japan mostly uses CDMA technology in lieu of GSM. Basically, for those studying abroad, don't expect to be able to pop a sim card into your quad-band BlackBerry and be ready to go. You'll have to buy a pay-as-you-go phone once you get there. As you can see here, SoftBank's offerings in terms of pay-as-you-go phones are pretty weak, but hopefully that means they'll be reasonably priced...However, considering it's quite difficult (at least from what I've read) for non-citizens to get phones, I'm sure ND's study abroad program has something worked out already.

2 comments:

Angela F said...

I would hope they have something up for that, because i know a lot of people who study abroad or want to (like me) really would like the semi-security a cell phone gives you (like as a way of reaching someone if you are lost). I didn't know that getting a phone to work in Japan was as big of a problem, though I have to say I never used my phone abroad, so I don't have a ton of experience with that. Thanks for the informative post!

Felix said...

Nice post about the phone situation! I was wondering about that over the summer if I chose to study abroad, but looks like you are ahead of the game right now. If I end up going, it's good to know that some service that works there can possibly work here as well.