TOKYO-Japan’s major carriers said they had taken all necessary measures by the end of September to cope with any potential Y2K problems. Now, say the carriers, they are busily preparing for counter measures for the upcoming critical days.
Reports say there could be two types of Y2K troubles in the communications area: Calls might be interrupted when the year changes from 1999 to 2000; and some customers might get a telephone bill that is too high or too low due to computer malfunction.
Some carriers, including NTT Mobile Communications Network (NTT DoCoMo), are quite optimistic about the Y2K problems. Others are more cautious.
NTT DoCoMo
NTT DoCoMo launched preventive measures for Y2K in 1995. By the end of June 1999, the firm had completed Y2K compliance on all of its approximately 300 communications and support systems.
According to Makoto Hirokami, executive engineer of DoCoMo’s Information Systems Department, the company’s switches are based on specifications specific to NTT and are working on real time and will not be affected by the 2000 time change. Although its billing system has a time concept, it doesn’t have any concept for years. “That’s why we will not have any Y2K problems,” he said.
To demonstrate what it is claiming, DoCoMo participated in interconnection tests conducted under the leadership of the Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA) from June through September. Among the 147 member companies of TCA (all are Type I or facilities-based carriers), 65 carriers including all the major fixed-line, cellular, PHS and satellite operators connected their systems to each other using an NTT Corp. test-bed in Makuhari, Chiba prefecture.
Each participating carrier set its system’s clock first to 23: 57 on 31 December 1999 and made a call. The calls were completed at 0: 01 on 1 January 2000. The carriers also performed similar tests for calls between 28 February and 29 February, 2000, and 29 February and 1 March, 2000, the other two critical days for time-sensitive electronics.
The originating and terminating carriers in each call then exchanged their call detail records (CDR) for confirmation that the right operation was completed.
Using the system, NTT DoCoMo conducted the test for cellular calls with six carriers (NTT East, DDI Cellular, J-Phone Tokyo, IDO, J-Phone Kyushu and Cable & Wireless IDC), the test for PHS calls with three carriers (DoCoMo, NTT East and J-Phone Tokyo) and the test for beeper connection with NTT East.
DoCoMo declared the series of tests proved no confusion will occur on these critical days.
However, to handle unexpected happenings, DoCoMo will deploy 1,000 staff at its offices on 31 December. The firm’s special operation for Y2K will start at 19: 00 JST on that day, three hours before New Zealand will have the New Year until 19: 00 JST on 1 January, when Hawaii has its New Year.
Japan Telecom
Japan Telecom (JT) is taking a more cautious stance on the issue.
The company says both computers and switches may have some troubles on critical days because, for example, switches carry chips that may cause some wrongful operations and because switches are controlled by computers, which also may have some problems.
Like DoCoMo, JT had completed all of the necessary measures on its several hundreds of systems early on-by the end of June 1999.
JT also participated in TCA’s interconnection tests. The carrier conducted telephone system tests connecting with J-Phone Tokyo, J-Phone Kyushu and NTT East.
JT did not carry out any interconnection tests with DDI. Yasunori Ohno, assistant manager of JT’s Y2K project, explained that JT did not conduct tests with DDI partly because the test-site schedule was tight and partly because it can estimate the results for DDI-JT connection from interconnection tests between DDI and NTT East.
JT spent between 1 billion (US$9.5 million) and 1.5 billion yen (US$14.3 million) for Y2K problems-mainly for rewriting software, replacing hardware and labor costs.
On 31 December, several hundred JT staff members will stay at their offices to cope with unexpected problems. JT’s major branches will be open between 31 December and 1 January.
Since it has completed Y2K prevention testing, JT is now putting an emphasis on counter measures for the critical days of 31 December-1 January, 28-29 February and 29 February-1 March. JT worked out its contingency plan, a kind of manual for emergency, following the British Standard Institution (BSI)’s DISC PD 2000-1, a manual being used worldwide for Y2K compliance.
Ohno said if a switch should ring a warning siren, JT may first try to identify the wrongful site for the problem and try to shift the job to a different unit, or shift the routing. After JT has applied such an emergency measure, it will try to fix the troubled site.
“The difficulties of Y2K is it might be hard to identify the troubled site,” Ohno said.
As part of its effort to swiftly identify the troubled site, JT is planning to establish monitoring points, which engineers will use to check the status of operations on the critical days. JT is now finalizing the actual counter measures.
DDI
DDI had also completed Y2K measures by the end of June 1999 and participated in the TCA interconnection tests with several carriers. DDI will have spent a total of 1.1 billion yen for Y2K problems, including the labor cost and expenditure for operations during the critical days.
Between 31 December and 1 January, the carrier’s 300 staff-including engineers, public relations and sales staff-will stay at their offices to carefully monitor problems. Its customer center will be open around the clock on that day.
Since the carrier does not believe all telephone networks will go down on D-Day, it will try to cope with customers claims via telephone at its customer center.
Other areas
Not only networks, but also terminals may have some troubles. Some cellular and PHS terminals were found to have Y2K issues.
For example, NTT DoCoMo, which distributes Toshiba’s TS206, found some problems with the handset’s software used for dealing with mail. DoCoMo’s outlets are providing free software-rewriting services.
Among PHS terminals, Toshiba’s GENIO, Kyocera’s DS320 and Casio’s PH 551 were found to have some problems on their mail and calendar software. DDI Pocket put information regarding terminals with Y2K troubles on its Web site to encourage customers to make inquires with the manufacturers.
Infrastructure vendors will deploy a large number of technical staff on D-day. A total of 50,000 system engineers and related staff of the five major vendors in Japan will stay at their offices between the end of the year and the beginning of next year.
Included are 10,000 workers at Hitachi, 10,000 from NEC, 14,000 from Fujitsu, 6,000 from Japan IBM and 5,000 from Toshiba.
Because so many IT-related companies are planning to have staff on duty to cope with problems on the turn of the millennium, almost all the hotels in the Tokyo area are reportedly already booked.
While the major carriers said they have taken all necessary measures to cope with Y2K problems, there might be some confusion in the Internet and international communications industry on the critical days. Japan has more than 3,000 small Internet service providers (ISPs), and nobody has been able to provide an overall picture of how well these small ISPs have taken measures for Y2K problems. In the area of international communications, carriers cannot conduct interconnection tests unless their counterparts agree to do so.
