Cell phone numbers that repeat the same digit several times or contain regular number sequences are being sold on the Internet for huge amounts of money, sometimes demanding prices of hundreds of millions of yen, industry sources and police said. The prices of the “good numbers” have soared ahead of the introduction in October of a system which will allow people to retain the same phone number even if they switch cell phone companies.
DoCoMo have just announced their fees for October’s number portability launch. The company said that subscribers switching to DoCoMo from other operators will not be charged an MNP transfer fee, but like all new applicants, must pay a contract handling fee of 3,150 yen (incl sales tax). DoCoMo subscribers who move to other operators will be charged an MNP transfer fee of 2,100 yen (incl sales tax). DoCoMo will conduct an MNP Reservation Campaign, 10 Sep-23 Oct. People who apply to DoCoMo during this period and who conclude a contract between 24 Oct-31 Dec will be awarded 2,000 DoCoMo points (worth 2,000 yen), which can be applied toward the purchase of DoCoMo handsets or other products.
OhmyNews received investment funds of US$10 million from Softbank, led by CEO Masayoshi Son, last February. It established a branch in Tokyo and finally launched OhmyNews Japan, utilizing $5 million of these funds. OhmyNews Japan has been recruiting citizen reporters since last month. Until now, approximately 1,000 citizen reporters have joined OhmyNews Japan. Shuntaro Torigoe (66), a well-known journalist in Japan who previously worked with the Mainichi Daily newspaper, was appointed as the chief editor of OhmyNews Japan. The Japan website currently has 22 employees, including 10 staff reporters. The first issue of OhmyNews published yesterday with about 20 articles written by citizen reporters.
Recent survey from InfoPlant: 58.4% of respondents say they use mobile coupons and discounts more than once per month, with the main methods of access via leaflets and direct mail (63.3%), free papers (55%), and the mobile Internet (47.3%). The majority of respondents reported using mobile coupons or discounts 2-3 times per month (26.9%), followed by approximately 1 time per month (25.4%) and 1 time every 2-3 months (20.5%). In addition, 58.4% reported using them an average of about once per month, including some who used them more than once per week. Looked at by gender, females were more likely than males to use mobile coupons more than once per month.
Dai Nippon Printing has launched a new platform offering called SiteCast, an ASP service which has been developed for companies to easily create mobile formatted websites for campaigns in both print and broadcasting media. The system features a 2D barcode loaded with information including URLs of products which users can connect to campaigns from newspaper, magazine or catalogue advertisments via their mobile.
A large volume of English-language junk e-mails marketing male impotence drugs has been sent to domestic mobile phones from overseas since late last month. According to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, unsolicited e-mails have been sent to mobile phones in Japanese before, but this is the first confirmed instance of English-language junk e-mails.
