KDDI to compensate millions of users over outage

Jiji Press

17:26 JST, July 23, 2022

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — KDDI Corp. is set to compensate millions of users over a recent large-scale disruption of its mobile phone and data communications services, it was learned Friday.

Most of those eligible for compensation are believed to be people who only use KDDI’s voice call service. The total amount of compensation is expected to be the largest ever for a Japanese mobile phone carrier to pay for a service outage.

During the KDDI disruption, which occurred in the early hours of July 2, up to 39.15 million subscribers nationwide, or more than 60% of its users, had difficulty using voice calls and data communications. It took 86 hours for the company to declare a full recovery.

KDDI, which operates the au mobile phone services, is set to submit a report on the cause of the outage, regarded as a serious incident under the telecommunications business law, and measures to prevent any recurrence to the communications ministry as early as Thursday.

The ministry told the company to report details of the disruption by Aug. 1. The report is seen spelling out the cause, future prevention measures and the number of people affected.

KDDI’s terms and conditions for subscription say that compensation will be paid if its services are completely unavailable or put into similar situations for 24 hours or longer. Sums of basic charges and communications and other service fees for every 24 hours affected by the disruption will be paid to subscribers as compensation.

KDDI apparently found it necessary to pay compensation to several million users while examining the scope of the impact of the glitch.

The company is set to announce its earnings results for April-June on July 29.

KDDI President Makoto Takahashi is scheduled to hold a press conference to give fresh explanations on the incident.