KDDI Corp., operator of au mobile phone services, said Monday it will cut its bills for users affected by a recent series of network problems with its LTE high-speed wireless service by ¥700 each in July at the earliest.
KDDI President Takashi Tanaka extended his apologies at a press conference in the morning for the glitches that disrupted data and some verbal communications on April 27, May 29 and 30 in parts of Tokyo, Kanagawa and Yamanashi prefectures.
Although some 1.79 million users were affected, the cut in bills will cover about 700,000 to 800,000 users, as most of those affected overlap, according to KDDI.
KDDI also decided to increase its investment on base stations by ¥7 billion to ¥30 billion in fiscal 2013 to improve facilities to prevent a recurrence of a similar glitch.
The glitches were due to problems with base station control gear, Tanaka said.
He also said the LTE network for the popular iPhone 5 smartphone covered 71 percent of the nation's population as of the end of May and that higher-speed communications of up to 75 megabits per second covered 20 percent.
KDDI was chided by the Consumer Affairs Agency in May for exaggerating the coverage of the iPhone 5 network in ads last year, which said the LET network would cover 96 percent of the population by the end of March. In reality, only 14 percent was covered as of late March.