Japan Government Gives Administrative Guidance to KDDI

Tokyo -Japan’s communications ministry on Wednesday slapped telecom company KDDI Corp. <9433> with administrative guidance under the name of minister Yasushi Kaneko over its major network disruption in early July.

The moves were the first such administrative guidance given under the name of the communications minister. Such guidance in the past had been issued under the name of the ministry’s telecommunications bureau chief.

The KDDI service disruption occurred at 1:35 a.m. on July 2 and lasted for 61 hours and 25 minutes, affecting voice calls and data communications for more than 30.91 million users in total.

It was the biggest-ever communications failure involving a mobile phone carrier in Japan.

Recognizing the disruption as a serious incident under the telecommunications business law, the ministry demanded KDDI report by Nov. 10 on measures to prevent similar incidents and revisions to the way it informs users of service disruptions.