February 13, 2023 Administrative Guidance to NTT Docomo, Inc. Concerning Appropriate Response to Telecommunications Accident

Today, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) issued a stern warning to NTT Docomo, Inc. (headed by II Motoyuki, President and Chief Executive Officer) regarding large-scale accidents that occurred on December 17 and December 20, 2022, so as to prevent recurrence of similar accidents. In addition, MIC gave the company administrative guidance in writing, instructing it to implement without fail various initiatives from the viewpoint of preventing recurrence.

1. Background

On January 16, 2023, MIC received a serious accident report under Article 28 of the Telecommunications Business Act (Act No. 86 of 1984) from NTT Docomo, Inc. on the accidents resulting in the company's partial suspension of mobile phone data transmission services on December 17 and December 20, 2022.
These accidents caused users to experience difficulty in using data transmission services. The outage on December 17, 2022 is estimated to have affected approximately 2.42 million people for a duration of 4 hours and 54 minutes, while the outage on December 20 is estimated to have affected approximately 690,000 people for a duration of 2 hours and 2 minutes. Given that mobile phone services are a major part of the infrastructure of daily life for the public, the social impact of these outages is huge.
Such serious accidents are a major disruption to users' interests and gravely affects social and economic activities. Therefore, MIC issued a stern warning to the company to prevent similar accidents from occurring and gave it administrative guidance in writing from the viewpoint of preventing recurrence.

• *
  The published materials are in Japanese only.