Sunday, March 13, 2011

Update on Disaster Impact on Telecom Service in Japan

March 14

  • NTT again warned that TEPCO's "rolling" power blackouts, beginning on Monday, would impact many communications services, including telephone systems, Hikari, OCN, ISDN, FLET, FLET ADSL, Business Ethernet, some leased lines and PBX.


  • NTT reported that 1,928,800 people had used its emergency voice message board so far.


  • Softbank announced the some calling restrictions remain in place as of Monday at 9am.


March 13

  • As of March 13 at 6am, NTT East reported 475,400 fiber-optic lines were disconnected. This number is up 76,500 from 8 p.m. Saturday. In addition, 879,500 subscribed phone lines are out of service.


  • NTT and DoCoMo reported that some telecom equipment and base stations have gone off line after batteries were depleted and back-up generators ran out.


  • Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reported that 11,400 mobile phone base stations were offline as of 7am on Sunday morning. Damaged or offline base stations include: NTT DoCoMo, 4,930 base stations, KDDI (au) 2,670 base stations, Softbank 1,974 base stations, EMobile 314 base stations.


  • Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reported no damage and no current restrictions for NTT West.


  • NTT reported that 1,337,700 people had used its emergency voice message board so far.


  • NTT warned that TEPCO's "rolling" power blackouts beginning on Monday would impact many communications services, including telephone systems, Hikari, ISDN, FLET, FLET ADSL, Business Ethernet, some leased lines and PBX.


March 12

  • SoftBank opened its Wi-Fi access points for free, public usage. The company also made SMS messaging free.


  • SoftBank began accepting mobile donations to help earthquake victims.


  • SoftBank released an iPhone "Disaster Message Board" application.


  • KDDI published a long list of areas where its mobile service is not available due to base station failure.


March 11

  • All major carriers reported severe disruptions to their mobile, IP-VPN, WVS, Ether-VPN, optical access, IP phone and cable network operations, especially in the northeastern disaster areas.


  • NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Softbank, Willcom, eMobile all activated "Disaster Message Board" services to help the public confirm the safety of relatives and acquaintances during disasters, Disaster Message Board to provide services. DoCoMo activated the Disaster Message response a 14:57 local time, about 11 minutes after the start of the earthquake.


  • NTT enabled free calling from public telephone landlines, which in many cases stayed up in areas away from the disaster.


  • NTT implemented pre-arranged plans to separately manage voice calls and data packet transmissions for some handsets in order to avoid network congestion.


  • NTT confirmed that Corporate Communications Services (IP-VPN, e-VLAN, etc.) were disrupted, possibly due to damage at a data center near Tokyo.


  • Initial reports also indicated that the APCN2 cable system may have been damaged in some segments. Subsequent reports indicated that this trouble was resolved.


  • Pacific Crossing confirmed that its PC-1 W and PC-1 N cables are out of service. The cable landing station in Ajigaura on Japan's east coast is trying to evacuate due to tsunami.


  • Amazon Web Services reported that services from its new Tokyo data center continued normal operations.


http://www.ntt.co.jphttp://www.soumu.go.jp/