Very surprising. We’ve had roaming for decades here, and its been free since like 2008. Wild they took this long when so much other tech they have is more advanced.
Have you seen websites in Japan?
You mean being able to find whatever I need without clicking through 5 links?
Both factors are related, I couldn’t find the article I was looking for but this one touches on it too. There’s a section for cell phones specifically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galápagos_syndrome
The term “Galápagos syndrome” was originally coined to refer to Japanese 3G mobile phones, which had developed a large number of specialized features that were widely adopted in the Japanese market, but were unsuccessful abroad.[6][7] While the original usage of the term was to describe highly advanced phones that were incompatible outside of Japanese networks, as the mobile phone industry underwent drastic changes globally, the term was used to emphasize the associated anxiety about how the development of Japanese mobile phones and those in the worldwide economy went along different paths.
When a technology advances quickly and gets adopted in the local region (ex. Japan), it can be difficult to change when other parts of the world move forward with a different standard.
The opposite can also happen, where a region is slow to change and then haphazardly moves forward when the benefits are proven elsewhere. American payment systems for example
Very surprising indeed. Ever since GSM, i.e. 1992/93, roaming has been a thing.
NoOoOo tHaTs SoCiaLisMMMMM
Nice. My wife and I are one different carriers purely for disaster purposes. I used to have a wifi router on a third as my travel/work-backup. This is a good step for major disasters.
The downside is that, in the event of large-scale power outages, it will only be so helpful. When I lived in the US, I rode out hurricane Ike in Houston and we had no cell service as the battery backups on the cell towers slowly expired. Some in 24 hours, the longest I think in 72.
Meshtastic is great for this. I have a meshtastic node that is also a 10,000mAh backup phone battery. Just running it as a meshtastic node lasted 50 days on a single charge. And while I’ve not done another complete drain test on it again, I know for a fact that it lasts over 30 days every single time I charge it.
No one in rural Japan (or at least my corner of it) is doing meshtastic. Japan is more strict on power as well. I am a licensed HAM and even that is pretty thin on the ground up here these days. I had family visit and one brought a node. Nothing at all anywhere we travelled even in one of northern Japan’s biggest cities
