Japan Telecom Recovery - mobile, the next day 3/12

This is the situation on the next day after the quake struck. 3/12 (Sat) around noon, according to my friend Asako Itagaki at WirelessWire News

Source:  WirelessWire News, 3/12 noon

NTT DoCoMo

• FOMA (3G) voice service is occasionally interrupted due to congestion.  There are cases that users get "no service" on their phone.
• FOMA voice and data cannot be used in the areas with no power.
• Calls to Tohoku and Kanto area are partially blocked to avoid congestion after 3:07pm on 3/11.

au (KDDI)

• au voice service is occasionally interrupted due to congestion.
• Mobile e-mail notification does not work in some parts of following prefectures:  Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Miyagi, Yamagata, Fukushima, Niigata, Igaragi, Gunma, Tochigi, Chiba, Tokyo, Saitama, Kanagawa, Yamanashi

Softbank

• Softbank voice service is occasionally interrupted due to congestion.
• Calls to the following prefectures are partially blocked to avoid congestion after 8:00am on 3/12:  Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Miyagi, Fukushima, Yamagata, Ibaragi, Gunma, Tochigi, Chiba, Tokyo, Saitama, Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Shizuoka

E-mobile

• Unstable transmission in the Eastern Japan, in some parts of the following prefectures:  Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima, Ibaragi, Tochigi, Gunma

Wilcom

• Unstable transmission due to the base station problems caused by power outages in Kanto, Tohoku and Tokai area

UQ

• WiMax is unstable in the wide areas in Eastern Japan

Michi

Japan Telecom Recovery - Mobile right after the quake

This is an early situation review when the quake struck.  Time is all expressed in Japan Standard Time. 3/11(Fri) 2:46pm  The first quake occured off the coast of Miyagi prefecture, Northern Japan (Tohoku area).  The second big one occured about 30 minutes later off the coast of Ibaragi prefecture (Kanto area).

Unknown number of cell sites were destroyed and mobile traffic was quite congested right after the quake.  At Narita Airport near Tokyo, I tried to call my parents in Kanagawa prefecture with my Japanese cell phone and did not go through.  I could send out mobile e-mails, but did not get any reply for a few hours.

After 2 hours or so, I started to see many people on cell phone outside of Narita, where everyone in the airport building evacuated.  So I tried to call again and got through.  After another 1/2 hour, my sister called me to my cell.

According to them, mobile e-mails were taking about 2 hours to be delivered.  Family members were exchanging mobile e-mails asking "are you OK?" to each other, and the other side got them after everyone came home.

Still I could not receive any mobile e-mails at all.

I was lucky to be in the Airport, where WiFi was restored in a few hours.  I noticed that my Verizon Android phone (I did not use 3G roaming) have WiFi connection at around 7pm.  E-mails were still slow but Twitter was working fine, so I started tweeting that I was OK.  Twitter, Facebook, SMS via GoogleVoice started to puring in.  Airport WiFi was totally fine, it kept working all night.

View this photo

Michi

Japan's telecom recovery info - Internet

I just came back from Japan, after being stranded at Narita Airport overnight due to the big earthquake last Friday. There really is nothing I can do to help the situation, other than to pray for my country, but as an industry professional, I will try to gather as much info as possible about telecom, mobile and internet infra/service desruption and recovery in Japan.

First, a secialist is surprised that Internet infrastructure was largely intact in Japan after the quake.  I experienced it myself at Narita.  After a few hours, WiFi in the airport was up and running, and I could send/receive e-mails and Twitter on my Android smartphone with no problem.  It was such a relief to have a reliable communication device, as in those times, mobile phones are hard to go through and I refrained myself not to dial too many times so the circuits would not get clogged.

Japan's Internet largely intact after earthquake, tsunami

Despite the Quake, Japan’s Internet Connections Are Going Strong

More info will follow.

Michi