KDDI apologizes for massive nationwide outage

KDDI Corp. President Makoto Takahashi, right, apologizes for a massive breakdown in the company's ability to provide mobile and online services during a news conference in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on July 3. The KDDI Corp., a Takayuki Kakuno Cellphone carrier, said on July 3 that nearly 40 million mobile connections were snarled by a nationwide glitch that occurred in the early hours of the previous day.

As a telecommunications company dedicated to supporting the social infrastructure and providing a stable service, we regret the breakdown, according to KDDI President Makoto Takahashi, who described the incident as the company's largest to date.

KDDI said earlier that a failure in part of its system to convert voice to data was responsible for the outage. Communications became overwhelmed as the unprocessed data was accumulated, forcing KDDI to stop its transmission of data to other services.

The company said on July 3 that services in western Japan had been recovered by 11 a.m.

It confirmed that those in eastern Japan were restored by 5: 30 p.m.

The total number of affected lines was 39.15 million. The figure included 35.8 million mobile phone lines, 1.4 million set aside for the mobile virtual network operator and 1.5 million for Internet of Things.

Up to 260,000 companies -- including those in logistics, banking and transportation -- were affected by the outage, according to Takahashi.

He said that KDDI, one of three major carriers, will consider compensating individual customers and businesses that were affected.