Four major mobile phone carriers said on Thursday that they cannot say when their services will be fully restored in areas hit hard by the Noto Peninsula earthquake, which struck on New Year's Day.

The 7.6 magnitude earthquake disrupted mobile communications services mainly in the northern part of the peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture.

"We were unable to reach our base stations because the roads were cut off," NTT Docomo Executive Vice President Hiroshi Kobayashi told an online joint news conference, adding that network outages are expected to continue.