But the "au" mobile brand operator stopped short of saying when its connections will fully recover after the failure not only prevented its users from making calls and getting online but also impacted such areas as banking, transmission of weather data, parcel deliveries and network-connected cars.
KDDI's work to resume services in eastern
Holding a press conference, KDDI President
KDDI said a breakdown of its system for voice calls had triggered a concentration of traffic that led the company to reduce user access.
Internal Affairs and Communications Minister
The recent string of issues at major Japanese mobile carriers is "extremely regrettable," Kaneko added as he acknowledged that KDDI's outage was on a larger scale than
Reiterating his call for carriers to keep in mind that cell phones are an important part of social infrastructure, Kaneko said appropriate steps would be taken to deal with the matter, hinting at the issuance of an administrative order.
The disruption that continued for an unprecedentedly long time caused numerous inconveniences. Passengers were briefly unable to use IC rechargeable cards on buses traveling in the
The network problem has also affected its 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
As of March, KDDI was providing around 62 million mobile connections, with individual contracts for the au, UQ Mobile and povo brands accounting for about 31 million.
In October last year,
The disruption, lasting around 29 hours and affecting at least 12.9 million users, was labeled a serious incident by the communications ministry.
==Kyodo
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