Well, often it's true but sometimes you can find a local operator with the same troubles for international calls.

There has been some discussion on HoFo's T-Mobile forum to the effect that it is now possible to buy a prepaid SoftBank SIM. It's not easy. Only the corp. stores will have one and you will probably need to speak Japanese to get what you want. However, it is supposed to be possible. The down side is that the calling rate is JPY90/min! On the other hand you can sign up for unlimited e-mail for JPY300/month. What exactly "e-mail" means is not well understood. Any sort of unlimited bitpipe that leads outside a walled garden can be made into something handy.

another mvno on the horizon:

Reuters says that Nokia itself intends to launch there on DoCoMo, using high-end phones to begin with

Somehow I don't think this is on the way to fulfilling hopes of easier prepaid use there

hmmm, some people at Reuters and Nokia aren't very good at talking to each other

instead, they're pulling out

http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...4AQ1K620081127

It bug's me why Japan cannot join the pre pay market like huge chunks of the rest of the planet....grrrrrrrrrr

Is there no hope that UM+ (44) will ever cover Japan? Kind of a pisser... its not like Japan is some 3rd world country... most believe that Tokyo will become the next Wall St and the yen will become the new benchmark currency...

Is it possible to trade my UM+ for UM (423) (which I gather *does* support Japan)?

Well I hope at least Celtrek is decent in Japan (including Osaka and Kyoto...)

United Mobile never worked in Narita. I have both a UM and UM+ SIM. The phone worked fine with my local provider with my iPhone 3G and my Treo 750 on Softbank and NTT DoCoMo on 2100Mhz, but my 2 United Mobile SIMs declined access. They still claim on their website there is 3G access in Japan... such a lie from what I have seen. Their customer service never returned any explanations as of why it didn't work. Nice customer service.... Did anyone try Mobal?

Mobal is reserved to US and Canada customers.

ah... well, that can be arranged I'm sure, especially if you happen to be there for a least a few days.