From our other sites
The story
KDDI has released its roaming coverage map for Rakuten Mobile covering October onward. Replacing the coverage that was in place through the end of September, the roaming area will now be scaled back in stages, premised on Rakuten building out its own base stations. Roaming has already ended in Tokyo’s 23 wards, Nagoya, and Osaka, and the newly released map reveals major cutbacks now hitting Yokohama, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and other cities. Thread posters reported one after another that their homes or workplaces had dropped out of the coverage area, and opinion split over whether the blame lies with Rakuten’s slow base-station rollout or with KDDI’s handling of the situation.
KDDI has published its roaming area map for Rakuten Mobile for October onward. Roaming under the previous framework ends as of the end of September.
From October, roaming will end in areas where Rakuten already provides its own coverage. For other areas, on the “basic premise” (quoted verbatim from KDDI’s announcement) that Rakuten will build out its own base stations, KDDI will keep helping maintain infrastructure in some regions for a set period. The roaming coverage area will be scaled back in stages.
Roaming has already ended in Tokyo’s 23 wards, Nagoya, and Osaka. The newly published map lets users toggle between the pre-end-of-September and post-October situations, making it clear that roaming coverage will shrink dramatically in places like Yokohama, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka.
Source: k-tai.watch.impress.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
They should publish it side-by-side with Rakuten's own coverage map.
KDDI has no need to do that and probably couldn't anyway.
Rakuten should just publish it themselves — the real issue is that Rakuten's own coverage map doesn't distinguish between areas covered by its own base stations and areas propped up by au.
Huh? That's Rakuten's job to do.
It's Rakuten that's failing to fulfill its duty as a carrier here.
Guess dim-witted people like this just don't get that.
I wish they'd just publish a map that only highlights where roaming is ending.
People in Chiba are suffering through torrential rain right now.
Do they really have to do this at a time like this?
That probably means indoor reception is going to get worse — houses squeezed between apartment buildings, or inside reinforced-concrete buildings, could get rough.
Rakuten Mobile users might already be finding it harder to connect since this morning.
If something feels off…
Are you kidding me?!
So is it going to become useless inside amusement facilities packed with people from all over too…?
Why didn't they make it so you can actually compare old versus new?
Then again, right next to an antenna, you apparently get full bars and it's rock solid…
Probably racked up a total of 100GB.
Wonder how much that roaming cost them.
Since au set up a paid roaming option, there's no choice but to add it on and use that.
But if you're going that far, you might as well just switch to au outright.
If it shows "Rakuten" next to the signal icon, does that mean it's Rakuten's own line?
You can't tell unless you install an app that shows which frequency band you're connected to.
If it's the 1.7GHz band (Band 3), that's Rakuten's own network.
If you're going to do it, build base stations like your life depends on it.
That's embarrassing.
Elon Musk: "Here's what Starlink's gonna cost you."
Mikitani: "We have no intention of relying on Starlink — we're building our own base stations." <- we are here lol
Has anything changed since today?
I keep using it because I'm drawn in by the free calls.
Since I started with Rakuten up through today, I bought my device outright, pay the ¥1,400/month service fee with Rakuten Points, and haven't paid a single yen beyond that (lol)
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Rakuten Mobile has been filling its coverage gaps through “roaming” — borrowing au’s network — on a temporary basis until its own base-station rollout is complete. This roaming arrangement was always planned to shrink in stages, ending first in city centers, and the map released this time is the latest version of that rollback. Opinion in the thread split between those who blame Rakuten’s slow infrastructure buildout for the shrinking coverage and those who sympathize with KDDI’s position, having lent its infrastructure for free all this time. Two points are easy to get wrong here: this announcement isn’t a nationwide, all-at-once service cutoff but a region-by-region phased reduction, and subscribers can’t easily tell whether they’re on roaming or on Rakuten’s own network without checking the frequency band themselves.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Business News+) thread “[Telecom] Rakuten Mobile’s au Roaming — October Coverage Map Released.”
Leave a Reply