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Bringing an iPhone to Japan: Good Luck With the WiFi Spots

August 4, 2007
By Ken Worsley


Over the past few months, I have been following the nascent (slowing emerging?) discussion surrounding the iPhone and its presence - or lack thereof - in Japan. Back in January I took a look at an LA Times piece which asserted that Japan simply wasn’t interested in the iPhone, and just about ten days ago another piece appeared here which featured a translation of a marketing survey into Japanese opinions on the iPhone that was done by Ken Y-N at What Japan Thinks.

This time I’ve found a blog post by David McKenna at Mac Daily News that gives a good description of his experience bringing a US iPhone to Japan in order to see how it would work. Of course, he was able to get online (sometimes - more about that later), but the iPhone’s GSM system won’t allow for US phones to roam in Japan.

The author comes to two conclusions that I strongly agree with: 1) Japan is awful when it comes to WiFi access and hotspots. 2) The iPhone will have to be released on the 3G standard to really take off in the Japanese market. Of course, I have lots more opinions on this, but that’s for another time. Enjoy the piece…

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Comments

4 Responses to “Bringing an iPhone to Japan: Good Luck With the WiFi Spots”

  1. Scott on August 5th, 2007 10:32 pm

    Are you aware of freespot.net? It offers a search engine for free wi-fi hotspots in Japan:

    http://www.freespot.com/users/map_e.html

  2. Ken Worsley on August 6th, 2007 12:11 am

    Thanks Scott - I have seen both of Japan’s wi-fi hotspots on there before…

  3. Scott on August 6th, 2007 12:34 am

    :)

  4. Joseph on August 8th, 2007 10:31 am

    I think Japan is awful when it comes to FREE hotspots, but Wi-Max or citywide wifi might be coming along. In the city, I generally see something like this:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/tokyofortwo/414521339/

    Not sure what exactly those Livedoor connections are, but they seem to be everywhere.

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