Holiday Gift Guide »

Japanese carriers to end mobile phone locks?

Categories: General
By: , IntoMobile
Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 8:43 AM

Japan’s regulators decided to end restrictions on mobile phone users switching operators or changing the SIM card in their phones. The communications ministry and the country’s four major carriers reached the agreement and will set up new guidelines for the plan, Jiji Press reported.

At the moment, Japan’s major mobile networks sell handsets that accept only their respective SIM cards only, and cannot work with handsets bought from other carriers. In other words, they sell network-locked devices. To be fair, they subsidize them heavily, hence Japanese customers have some super high-end phones available for a friction of their retail price.

Offering locked phones only is not a nice thing, especially for those Japanese travelling abroad. They can’t simply switch SIM cards, but need to grab another phone to use with a local network and save money on way too expensive roaming costs.

To be perfectly clear – this news isn’t 100% confirmed. We’re hoping that we have the official information within days. Stay tuned in the meantime…

[Via: Yahoo]

About The Author

Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.

  • Phineas J. Whoopie

    Wow.. no more trying to jam an “unlock sim” thing into the phone under the sim card.. But I went through the trouble of getting a sharp/softbank used phone for a trip to Japan, got a 3kY prepaid sim for it, and had to give up and swap the sim into an old Vodaphone V980 (worked great!). Even with the menus in english, the sharp’s key + menu layout was ODD… I know that JP cell phones are luxury grey market items in AU and HK, etc.. but this is fashion, not function. I guess mr travelling sararyman would like an unlocked phone though: If he is used to the JP/softbank menus, he is going to hate using a “western” unlocked nokia or moto as a second phone.