(keitai-l) Re: Communications opitons in Japan, especially mobile phones?

From: Paul <pbl1_at_cornell.edu>
Date: 04/16/06
Message-ID: <44426EE5.6078ED6@cornell.edu>
    You would have a hard time lowering it in th US or Japan.  In fact
\8500 is not too bad in EITHER country... Prices keep rising everywhere.

    The easiet thing to do if you wish is combine ISP/Fixed Line/Mobile Phone
together.  You can sometimes do that with Dion by KDDI.  (I had a great
deal with them in the Kodan but my bills totalled \10000). But it'll still run
you about that much.  I'd go for fiber if possible... its much faster than
the DSL varieities, but you'd want to avoid wireless internet as that
always ups your bill by a lot, (and with fiber speeds it will be a noticable
slow
down on tranmission rates).

    Mobile phones avaerage \5000 miniumum a month a fixed line is
minimum \1000 a month if its an IP phone, ADSL/Fiber varies a lot but
will probably be about \2000 minimum  That's \8000 already.
    The best thing I think is to try out some of the brand new mobile phone
competitors (Willcom etc) to try and decrease the huge Mobile bill.  The
other option is to try what's left of the PHS phones... they have always been
cheaper and better (but not as many super fancy features).
    Then go for a low cost ISP like YahooBB, and maybe just drop the
fixed line phone or try Yahoo BB phone... it used to not work so well
but BBPhone improved over the years, I haven't used it in awhile, so
I don't know.  I also highly recommend Brastel cards for lowering long distance
costs.... the voice quality is great!

    I highly recommend YahooBB... I loved it when I had it.... MY new apartment
coduln't do Yahoo BB so I had to drop them a couple of years ago, so they
may not be as cheap and as good as they used to be.  One of my friends
in Tokyo worked there so I got a special discount to join and another
made the modems!  Tokyo is a really small place.

    For mobile phones my preference is TuKa... the cost can be low especially
if you don't use it much!  And voice quality and customer service is superb.
Of course the more you use it the higher the bill goes.

Shannon Jacobs wrote:

> Currently my communications costs in Kanagawa are running about 8,500
> yen/month. This includes regular phone service, an ISP, a linked ADSL
> service, and a mobile phone, but it still seems somewhat expensive. There
> are various 'extended' options including cable television and fiber optic
> services and various wireless networks. Just the small bit of information
> that has actually been translated into English is already pretty
> overwhelming, and none of my Japanese friends and coworkers have been able
> to provide 'definitive' clarification--even the ones that are working in
> related areas. I feel like I've already been deluged with data, but I'm not
> finding much in the way of useful information, and it's quite difficult to
> even formulate the query in a encompassing way.
>
> The simple summary of goals is that I'd like to minimize my costs while
> maintaining "sufficient" service, but that notion of "sufficient" is
> difficult... Last year I was hoping to consolidate everything on a wireless
> network, but the wireless network I'm using now is so slow that it can
> barely handle streaming audio, and the faster networks are priced by the bit
> at apparently prohibitive rates. (Well, if I want to watch Jon Stewart
> videos...) Yahoo BB looked interesting, but like my current ADSL and mobile
> phone providers, English support is an afterthought. I can get by on
> Japanese, but it's enough of a nuisance that I've been uninterested in Yahoo
> BB so far... E-Access is supposed to have an interesting wireless offering,
> but it's still unclear just what that will be and when.
>
> This mail was sent to address paul@thetamusic.com
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--
-Paul Lester
pbl1@cornell.edu
paul@thetamusic.com
http://members.tripod.com/~pbl1/
--Its in every one of us to be wise...
we can all love ev'rything without
ever knowing why...its in every one
of us...
Received on Sun Apr 16 19:34:32 2006