157
New service in Japan to allow mobile users to use other carriers’ networks during outages
(www.straitstimes.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Nice. My wife and I are one different carriers purely for disaster purposes. I used to have a wifi router on a third as my travel/work-backup. This is a good step for major disasters.
The downside is that, in the event of large-scale power outages, it will only be so helpful. When I lived in the US, I rode out hurricane Ike in Houston and we had no cell service as the battery backups on the cell towers slowly expired. Some in 24 hours, the longest I think in 72.
Meshtastic is great for this. I have a meshtastic node that is also a 10,000mAh backup phone battery. Just running it as a meshtastic node lasted 50 days on a single charge. And while I've not done another complete drain test on it again, I know for a fact that it lasts over 30 days every single time I charge it.
No one in rural Japan (or at least my corner of it) is doing meshtastic. Japan is more strict on power as well. I am a licensed HAM and even that is pretty thin on the ground up here these days. I had family visit and one brought a node. Nothing at all anywhere we travelled even in one of northern Japan's biggest cities