mobile phone number portibility

people often think of japan as the home of technology..
but they have only just introduced the system of being able to move your mobile phone number to a different carrier today!

how long have we been able to do that in australia?
all the phone companies here are now worried about the competition this will create, but really they have had it easy up till now. time to start thinking of the customers .

vodafone (now called softbank) have now announced that they will be putting free calls to other vodafone users into their plans. and that they will be matching any price drop by the other 2 big companies by 200 yen discounts within 24 hours of any announcement.

i will be interested to see how this plays out...
hopefully they will put in price caps like australia..