Doing away with roaming charges may be something we can all wish for not too distant in the future given that European Union has been slashing these rates rapidly (80-90%) in the last 8 years and is working on abolishing them altogether, but Japan is already offering travellers and visitors to their country a great alternative to roaming that can keep their minds off worries of possible overages and bill shocks. NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), the ICT solutions and international communications business within the NTT Group has unveiled this week the “OCN mobile ONE Prepaid SIM for VISITOR” that allows visitors to Japan to purchase their data packages before they leave their country of origin, saving them the hassle of looking for data packages, comparing rates and making payments while they are in a foreign country.
The “OCN mobile ONE Prepaid SIM for VISITOR” package allows business travelers and tourists visiting Japan to enjoy up to 100MB of data per day for 14 days. The SIM costs JPY3,500 (USD34.50), provides a maximum speed of 150Mbps/50Mbps and a maximum volume of 100MB/day over the 14 days which throttles down to 200 Kbps once the daily quota is exhausted. To cater for visitors from all over the world, NTT Com provides multi-ligual interfaces across its website, application page, manuals and helpdesks. Visitors are able to collect their SIMs upon arrival in Japan from one of the several airport post offices or from selected hotels. Purchases can also be made in Japan itself using vending machines and the XCom Global Inc counters in selected airports.
NTT Com is also adding another feature to this SIM by offering travelers the Japan Connected-free Wi-Fi service which provides access to about 18,000 free Wi-Fi hotspots around Japan, including at major airports, stations and shops, provided by JNTT-BP, also an NTT Group company.
