About 5:15 PM today I heard the public PA (Kouhou Shizuoka) announce that NTT's Internet telephone system was down across the whole of Shizuoka Prefecture.

It was surprising to me because the announcement system is supposed to be non-commercial in nature. But later, having read this article, I understand the rationale. With broadband widely available (ADSL and fiber) a lot of Japanese people have opted to eliminate their regular telephone lines completely, in favour of a combination of keitai (cellular phones) and IP Denwa (Internet Telephony).

Emergency services (119 & 110) were not available during the outage and the main purpose of the announcement was to make the public aware of that fact. This outage should be an embarrassment for NTT. Apparently their VoIP system lacks the necessary redundancy that you would expect from a communication system that is the only lifeline for some people.

NTT has lost a lot of their land-line revenues to both mobile phones and VoIP in recent years. The reason is obvious: NTT toll charges (even on local calls) are outrageous. Finally people have a choice. In recent years they have lowered their "telephone line rights" charge from 75,000 yen to somewhere around 20, or 30,000 yen, to try to slow down the market shrinkage. Well, that only applies to new subscriber signups. Even existing customers are simply not making calls on their regular phone lines when mobile phones are ubiquitous, the price of those are coming down and the availability of VoIP is significantly cheaper. For new subscribers (such as university students living on their own for the first time) it makes no sense at all to pay the extortive "telephone line rights" fee only to then be hit with excessive charges for every call you make. Internet calls are cheap or free.

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Stephen Brown