3G iPhone in Japan?

[mavis]

However, using a foreign unlocked iPhonewith a SBM iPhone SIM probably won't get you in trouble.

This is exactly the scenario that people have been discussing in this thread; SoftBank (according to the CSR I spoke with) is identifying foreign-purchased by IMEI and will not cap data usage fees like they will with iPhones purchased in Japan.

 

[mavis]

The internet speed while tethering varries, but I've tested about 1.5 Mbps to 700Kbps download and a capped upload at 386Kbps. This is using a 3G iphone, so I don't have 7.2 HSDPA, but I've been at the Docomo store and have tested their display laptops that are demonstrating their Wireless aircards that are using the 7.2 HSDPA, and I've gotten about those speeds as well.

That's it?

Here I thought docomo would be substantially faster than SoftBank, but I consistently test much faster than what you're describing - typically in the 2.xMbps range ... Our uploads are capped a little lower, but downloads are pretty quick.

Here's one of my better tests:

 

[rtc872]

Can I ask where you found this information out? Does Softbank have official announcements on where they are expanding their coverage? Is it published anywhere? The information on their website (as far as I've seen) is like three years out of date.

There was a big letter drop. I live in Hokkaido and pretty much I just lived in a black hole for reception and it seems they have just fixed that problem and sent out paper saying softbank now available and to visit their nearest branch for details on phones and plans.

I just did a quick look on the internet and their site and it says nothing about it.

Sorry to get your hopes up.

So in other news, just don't temp the SB by using a foreign phone. I guess I will just be waiting until I either get a longer visa or return home...

 

[sushi]

Here I thought docomo would be substantially faster than SoftBank,

I figured that DoCoMo would be faster as well.

One issue with DoCoMo is that they have two networks to support (MOVA and FOMA). MOVA has better coverage than FOMA but is being phased out in March 2012. Until that time, DoCoMo must allocate resources to keep both networks running. After March 2012, the FOMA network will be the standard.

DoCoMo has been continuously updating their cell structure. they have increased from 30,000 to 68,000 towers in the past 3.5 years.

Nonetheless, DoCoMo has been losing market share to AU and SoftBank. Part of the SoftBank growth has been due to the iPhone and some cheap data rates. In simple terms, if I was in a room with 10 Japanese friends, 5 years ago, 8 out of 10 would have DoCoMo. One would be AU and one would be Vodaphone (now SoftBank). Today, I would expect 4-5 on DoCoMo, and 2-3 each for AU and SoftBank. That is a huge market shift in a relatively short time frame.

Not sure what is the root cause for this rather large shift, or whether it will continue.

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS (White, 32GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

Wow, impressive.

I wonder if they've beefed up the network/backend recently ... I'm in central Tokyo right now, so there should be lots of traffic around here ...

 

[rtc872]

To begin with sorry if you have answered this a million times but this thread is a mammoth and I have done multiple searches to no avail

I have just renewed my visa and on the application I was silly enough to tick the 1 year instead of 3. I have been in Japan for 18 months now and plan to be here for a while yet but want to get an iphone. Have I blown my chances of contracting. I have a Japanese credit card and I plan to buy the phone out right.

Second how bad is the coverage in Hokkaido. I found coverage maps and there is coverage mostly where people are but has anyone had trouble that they found unreasonable?

Thanks in advance

 

[sushi]

I have been in Japan for 18 months now and plan to be here for a while yet but want to get an iphone. Have I blown my chances of contracting. I have a Japanese credit card and I plan to buy the phone out right.

Since you are going to purchase the iPhone outright, I don't think that you'll have trouble.

The standard contract is 26 months. They tell you 24 months, but the kickback from SoftBank doesn't start until the 3rd month. So from month 3 to month 26 your would receive 1,920 yen (for a 32GB 3GS) iPhone. If you cancel your contract early, you loose the kickback. The cancellation fee is 10,000 yen.

If you purchased the iPhone over time, you would still need to pay the cancellation fee. However, you would also have to pay the remaining balance that you owed on the iPhone. That is why they want you to be in Japan for 2 years so that they can collect.

In your case, since you are purchasing the iPhone up front, it won't matter. From SoftBank's perspective if you cancel early, they will make money on you in the form of not having to pay the 1,920 yen per month.

Hope that makes sense. Let us know how it goes.

 

[rtc872]

^ that makes perfect sense. Thanks for the input.

So I still get the 1920 off my bill a month which means that including that and excluding the repayments for the bill I should be able to get away with a bill that has a 4000 yen min. if I make no calls or sms but use max data. That is actually appearing to be a reasonable rate...

Now just to talk to somebody in this softbank forsaken island (hokkaido) that can tell me about coverage.

Thanks a heap

 

[sushi]

^ The iPhone 3GS 32GB model is around 69,120 yen.

Over the 26 month period, SoftBank rebates 1920 yen for 24 months for a total of 46,080 yen. Subtracting from the original price of 69,120 yen leaves the iPhone costing 23,040 yen. Not bad.

iPhone plan charges:
_315 yen --> S! Basic Pack (i)
_980 yen --> White Plan (for calling)
___0 Yen --> Phone calls
4410 Yen --> Data plan
5705 Yen --> Subtotal
1920 Yen --> Rebate credit from SoftBank
3785 Yen --> Monthly bill.

Total cost of ownership for you over 26 months would be estimated at 171,370 yen (69,120 plus 5705 x 2 plus 3785 x 24) or about an average of 6,591 yen / month.

Phone call rates:

• White Plan (WP) --> 42 yen per minute
• Double White Plan (DWP) --> 21 yen per minute
• DWP cost is 1960 yen/month

Notes:

• Break even point between WP and DWP is around 47 minutes talk time. Talk more than 47 minutes then the DWP is cheaper. Talk less than 47 minutes then the WP is cheaper.
• Data plan is from 1026 yen to 4410 yen depending on amount of data used. It takes very little data transfer to max out.
• Data plan cost of 4410 yen is good until September 30th. If you contract after that date, then it may go back to the regular fee of 5985 yen.

As for actual coverage in Hokkaido, I have not idea. As for living in Hokkaido, what a wonderful place to live. Skiing, snowboarding, US type cities, fresh wonderful seafood, etc.

 

[ThomBoh]

Hi guys I have an unlocked iPhone that I'm trying to get to be able to use here in Japan (im gonna be here for 8 months). I've done a decent amount of searching around but havent found definite answers:

1. I want to go softbank but am TERRIFIED of them kicking me off the data capped plan for having a foreign iphone and getting a ridic bill. I spoke to a Softbank CSR personlly the other day and she said sometimes the capped plan wont work with foreign iphones for reasons they dont know, so they cant guarantee that itll work. That sounds like an APN problem to me and as long as I set my APN properly I would think it would work just fine. She said its not against policy to give me a SIM for a foreign iPhone and she didnt say theyre kicking foreign IMEIs off the plan so it SOUNDS good.... but the thought of them just kicking me off and getting screwed on data still scares me. Any definite facts on this???

2. Failing softbank, if I go NTT, is there ANY way for me to get a capped data plan?? I spoke to them and they said they have a capped plan, but it's for i-mode (which the iphone is NOT) so it doesnt sound like it. But i've read a few posts about people trying complicated this and that -- long story short is there any way I can get guaranteed capped data with NTT?

Thanks for any help you guys can offer.

 

[rtc872]

^ I read on the softbank site that they are determined to prevent the use of stolen phones on their network. So I am not sure about the chicken or the egg but I think that might be how they are treating foreign iphones. They dont know if the phone was stolen or not because they didnt sell it and cant verify who is the authorised owner. That is just my 2 cents. I dont want to risk it.

at sushi,

thanks for the breakdown. So of course @softbank emails are included in data so it doesnt matter. I rarely call for more than 10 mins a month so I dont see that being a problem.

If I contract before the end of this month, will that mean that the data is 4400 for the rest of my contract?

might have to pull my finger out.

 

[sushi]

at sushi,

thanks for the breakdown. So of course @softbank emails are included in data so it doesnt matter. I rarely call for more than 10 mins a month so I dont see that being a problem.

If I contract before the end of this month, will that mean that the data is 4400 for the rest of my contract?

might have to pull my finger out.

If you contract before September 30th, then you will receive the 4,410 yen data plan cap for the duration of your contract.

The normal rate is 5,985 yen per month. SoftBank is running a promotion right now for the reduced rate of 4,410 per month. After September 30th, my guess would be that it will revert to the regular rate of 5,985 yen per month. But who knows, SoftBank may continue the promotion.

As for phone calls, you can always get the folks to call you that way it is on their dime. Plus SoftBank to SoftBank headsets is free from 0100 to 2100 everyday including weekends which is nice if your friends are using SoftBank.

 

[nateo200]

That's it?

Here I thought docomo would be substantially faster than SoftBank, but I consistently test much faster than what you're describing - typically in the 2.xMbps range ... Our uploads are capped a little lower, but downloads are pretty quick.

Here's one of my better tests:

Holy ****...That beats my schools T1 connection over wifi (granted it goes through a few repeaters then through an iPod touch 802.11b chip but still). Not impressive upload but the download on that over a cellular connection is quite amazing. How much traffic is on whatever carrier your using? That's insane.

 

[sushi]

^ In Japan, we have SoftBank as the carrier.

I just did a test using Speedtest:

DL --> 3.19Mbps

UL --> 0.28Mbps

And I live in the countryside compared to Tokyo.

 

[rtc872]

It looks like my Japanese credit card is being delayed until October.

Looking over everything it seems to be ok to use just a postal bank account which is cool but looking at this

http://broadband.mb.softbank.jp/mb/iphone_en/pdf/campaign_terms_conditions.pdf

It says "When New Contract is made under New Super Bonus (lump-sum payment), the payment method is limited to credit card payment"

Does that mean that I am screwed? Also is that paying for the lump-sum or is it paying for the monthly bills? Either way the whole point just comes across as superfluous and even pointless

Anyone with knowledge on reading legal stuff, I would appreciate your help.

Thanks as always

 

[jpop2006]

Come to Docomo Already!

Can anyone confirm if Softbank and Apple are on a exclusive carrier agreement?

If so, when will it end? Waiting for the iphone to come to Docomo is worse than waiting paint to dry.

 

[rtc872]

iPhone for everybody campaign extended

I just looked on the softbank website and it now says that the campaign is until 31st January 2010.

I must say it now gives me that little bit of breathing space that I was in sore need of.

 

[sealab2021]

Holy ****...That beats my schools T1 connection over wifi (granted it goes through a few repeaters then through an iPod touch 802.11b chip but still). Not impressive upload but the download on that over a cellular connection is quite amazing. How much traffic is on whatever carrier your using? That's insane.

Can I ask, how you got your ipod touch to connect to your school's network? Did you just ask if you could get the passcode? Because they told me that I can't connect a personal computer to their network.

 

[sealab2021]

That's it?

Here I thought docomo would be substantially faster than SoftBank, but I consistently test much faster than what you're describing - typically in the 2.xMbps range ... Our uploads are capped a little lower, but downloads are pretty quick.

Here's one of my better tests:

You are obviously using a 3GS to do you tests. I don't have a 3GS, just a 3G, so I'm never going to beat that score on Docomo until I go buy the latest hardware.

 

[mavis]

Can I ask, how you got your ipod touch to connect to your school's network? Did you just ask if you could get the passcode? Because they told me that I can't connect a personal computer to their network.

You mentioned using a 3G with docomo; I'd imagine that schools/businesses in other countries would be slightly less draconian about network security than here in Japan. The idiots I work with are so paranoid it's just pathetic (as if anyone at all in the world would be interesting in hacking the network to glean whatever non-information they actually store on the computers) ... The IT guys are so hopelessly out of touch with modern computing, it's not even funny. Accessing a wifi network in Japan? Yeah, good luck with that.

 

[Nermal]

Holy ****...That beats my schools T1 connection over wifi (granted it goes through a few repeaters then through an iPod touch 802.11b chip but still). Not impressive upload but the download on that over a cellular connection is quite amazing. How much traffic is on whatever carrier your using? That's insane.

Are you in the US? I've seen speeds of over 6 Mb/s here in NZ; it's not that our networks are very good, but rather that the US ones suck

 

[pauld]

Hi all - hopefully someone here may be able to answer this.

I have unlocked my (UK, O2) iPhone and have just acquired the prepaid sim from Softbank - it works a treat for voice calls, I've verified that I can send SMS and I can deal with it not having data.

Now, what I'm curious about is the @softbank.ne.jp mails.
I've been told that my prepaid sim is incapable of internet data transfer, so clearly if I were using the intended Softbank handset, the 'emails' wouldn't be going via data in the way that say mails from a Gmail account would to an iPhone.
So, A: how do they get through and are they really 'emails' in the traditional sense?
& B: can anyone tell me how I would go about accessing/composing them on my iPhone, or what I would need to do to enable this.

Apologies for asking what may seem quite simple questions - we've only been here for two weeks so far!

Thanks a million,

Paul

 

[sushi]

Can anyone confirm if Softbank and Apple are on a exclusive carrier agreement?

If so, when will it end? Waiting for the iphone to come to Docomo is worse than waiting paint to dry.

They are but I'm not sure how long it is for. Probably 3 to 5 years.

Maybe someone else knows how long.

Anyhow, I wouldn't hold your breath. If you really need to have your iPhone work with DoCoMo, then you could get an iPhone with a SoftBank contract, then cancel the contract, Jailbreak and unlock your iPhone, then move your DoCoMo SIMM to your iPhone, then upgrade your DoCoMo account for unlimited data.

FWIW, I was in the same boat. Decided to cancel DoCoMo and go with SoftBank. Easier to do. Plus you receive the SoftBank promotional discounts.

I just looked on the softbank website and it now says that the campaign is until 31st January 2010.

That's good to hear.

 

[rtc872]

^What's that got to do with the price of rice?

 

[sushi]

^What's that got to do with the price of rice?

Don't understand your question/comment.