Can Japanese Carriers Accommodate Data Hungry Smartphones?

According to a Kyodo news report earlier this week, Japanese carrier KDDI (TYO:9433) experienced a data communication disruption that affected over six million users. Our readers may recall that it was just a few weeks back when NTT Docomo experienced a similar service disruption, which it subsequently attributed to increased smartphone usage — particularly the increased use of VoIP applications like Naver Japan’s very popular Line.

What I thought was curious about the KDDI was that the company also acknowledged heavier data traffic from smartphones as a possible cause. From Kyodo’s report:

The latest trouble was caused by a failed electric supply to [KDDI’s] computer servers for e-mail services, but the incident had no impact on voice calls and Internet access, it said, adding that the failure may have resulted from an increase in data communication traffic for smartphones.

While it’s not surprising that carriers are having difficulties accommodating the increased data usage that comes with the rise of smartphones, I was curious to know to what extent Naver Japan’s Line app (with 15 million downloads in seven months) was creating difficulties for KDDI. I sent inquiries to representatives at both KDDI and Naver Japan on Monday, but as yet have not received a reply.

When we attended the Global Mobile Internet Conference last year, Softbank Mobile Corp’s executive vice president Ted Matsumoto commented on increased data usage in Japan:

46 percent is voice and SMS, the rest is data. Data usage is increasing steadily as voice is declining, becoming less and less important. Someday it will be replaced by VOIP.

The big value for us is that smartphones create traffic. We are the people who are in front of the end users to integrate and support the entire value chain. Network operation is only a part of our business. The important thing is that we are in front of end users responsible for end user satisfaction.

So while increased data usage is certainly a welcome thing for providers, this last point on end user satisfaction is key. Can carriers in Japan stay ahead of customer demand without experiencing the outages we have seen in recent weeks? Will new, data-hungry apps like Line be allowed to grow without interference from carriers? And perhaps most importantly, how will carriers’ networks respond in times of crisis like last year’s earthquake? All three major mobile operators (Docomo, KDDI, and Softbank) experienced major outages during the March 11 earthquake last year.