30.6 M. Subscribers Affected by Softbank’s Service Disruption

December 12, 2018

Tokyo--Last week's large-scale service disruption at major Japanese mobile phone carrier Softbank Corp. <9434> affected some 30.6 million subscribers, it was learned Wednesday.

Softbank, a unit of Softbank Group Corp. <9984>, has reported the figure to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.

This was one of largest cases of mobile service disruptions in Japan, according to officials of the ministry.

The disruption is estimated to have affected some 75 pct of Softbank mobile service subscribers, which stood at about some 40.43 million as of the end of September, including users of its low-cost Y!mobile services.

The ministry has categorized the disruption, which occurred on Thursday, as a "serious incident" under the telecommunications business law, asking Softbank to report details and preventive measures within 30 days from the incident.

A serious incident status indicates a situation in which 30,000 or more people are unable to make emergency phone calls for one hour or longer.

The disruption was caused by software malfunction related to packet-switching machines made by Swedish telecommunications equipment giant Ericsson. Jiji Press