KDDI completes work to restore network connections

TOKYO Kyodo KDDI Corp., a major Japanese telecom company, said on Sunday it has completed work to restore services to up to 39.15 million mobile connections that have been affected by a network disruption for over 40 hours.

The failure prevented users from making calls and getting online, but also impacted such areas as banking, transmission of weather data, parcel deliveries and network-connected cars, as well as the fact that the au mobile brand operator stopped short of saying when its connections will fully recover.

After most of its customers in western Japan were gradually gaining wireless access, KDDI's work to resume services in eastern Japan was completed around 5: 30 p.m.

KDDI President Makoto Takahashi apologized for the disruption, which began at 1: 35 a.m. Saturday, and said he would consider compensating individual and corporate users.

A breakdown of its system for voice calls triggered a concentration of traffic that led to the company reducing user access, according to KDDI.

Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Yasushi Kaneko said in an ad hoc press conference that he viewed the disruption as a serious incident. Kaneko acknowledged that KDDI's outage was on a larger scale than NTT Docomo Inc.'s nationwide disruption last October, and that the recent string of issues at major Japanese mobile carriers is extremely regrettable.

Kaneko said appropriate steps would be taken to deal with the matter, he suggested that an administrative order would be issued, as a result of his call for carriers to keep in mind that cell phones are an important part of the social infrastructure.

There were numerous inconveniences caused by the disruption that continued for an unprecedentedly long time. Passengers were unable to use IC rechargeable cards on buses traveling in the Tokyo metropolitan area, while automated teller machines outside its branches could not be used, according to a regional bank.

The network problem has also affected the low-cost UQ Mobile brand and its lower-priced povo wireless customers, as well as smaller rivals leasing connections from the telecom company, such as Rakuten Mobile Inc.

KDDI has provided around 62 million mobile connections, with individual contracts for the au, UQ Mobile and povo brands accounting for about 31 million, as of March.

The disruption, which affected 29 hours and affected 12.9 million users, was a serious incident, according to the communications ministry.