Japan's major mobile phone carriers agreed at a government panel meeting on Wednesday that they need to introduce roaming capabilities so their customers can use rival networks during service disruptions.
With the carriers warming to the idea following a recent widespread outage affecting one of them, a communications ministry panel of experts will advance discussions on the issue with a view to implementing the proposal from around 2025.
In early July, KDDI suffered a network outage that lasted over 60 hours, affecting at least 30.91 million people, with users unable to make emergency calls for an extended period.