B-mobile Sim Card

[TheWhiteBear]

Most of you might already know, getting a contract with cell companies in Japan can be impossibly hard, especially for tourist. Often times foreigners living or staying in Japan will have a challenging time getting a contract with regular Japanese cell companies and I would like to share a quick and easy way to obtain cell services in Japan. Regular Japanese phone companies would only provide service when you purchase a phone from them, even then you would also have to provide endless amount of paperwork. But most people coming to Japan already have a phone of their own and to get a contract with them is simply "pain in the ass." My friends and I happen to discover B-mobile last year and it has been working flawlessly.
You simply have to make an account and provide you bank information on their website, then choose the type of SIM card you wish to purchase. Personally I have a phone I bought in Taiwan and previously a phone from the US, the SIM card plan I decided to go with comes with a Japanese cellphone number and internet service, the bill each month will depend on your internet usage but 2,400 Yen should be the max amount you would be charged at 4GB+.Everything is done on their website and the whole process took me less than an hour. I got my SIM card few days after I had purchased it, all I had to do was replace the SIM card and some simple settings, the cell service you would receive is from DOCOMO and I've never had a problem with it. There are also plans for people who are traveling to Japan for a short amount of time, you can purchase your SIM Card before arriving and they will mail it to your hotel. The cancelling part is as easy as a click of a button on their website and no extra/hidden fees. There is however a small fee for first time users but it wasn't too big of a deal for many people.


http://www.bmobile.ne.jp/

 

[owlet]

about buying it.. I thought you HAD to have a credit card (visa debit card for example is no good)

and that was the sticking point for most

 

[TheWhiteBear]

about buying it.. I thought you HAD to have a credit card (visa debit card for example is no good)

and that was the sticking point for most

I think you could PayPal it though, also most people have a credit card now days? But not having to deal with the bullshit with cell companies is better then credit cards for a lot of people.

 

[e-smile]

bought it two years ago and it wasn't compatible with my phone. this year I bought a phone here and took the so-net sim in yodobashi

 

[meiji]

I'm pretty sure you have to have a real visa of some sort in order to get a JP phone number. Visitors that are on a 90 day visa waiver etc can get one of the B-Mobile data only SIMs however.

 

[Merritt]

Been here a year and a half....still using the so-net prepaid card I picked up on a previous vacation lol

 

[Triforce]

Sakura mobile is worth a look at too. They have some good plans.

https://www.sakuramobile.jp/order-japan-prepaid-sim/

 

[Qong02]

Im a big MVNO user (all these providers that use Docomo, SoftBank, AU networks but sell services, in case those that don't know).

For anyone that uses barely any data and only want data check out So-Net's 0-sim basically you buy the sim for 3000 yen (sometimes there's a deal somewhere to get one free at events) and you get 500MB a month. Then after its 100 yen per 100MB up to 1600 yen (right after the 2GB mark) after that you get 5GB so for me I basically use it in my iPad. I also have a wifi spot with UQ mobile so I get unlimited data with that (though my contract is ending and I need to check on this now it seems they throttle and limit on the new plans, which is the main reason I got it, no throttling) but sometimes there is no signal with the WiMAX and having the LTE on Docomo option is useful. You can check out their site here: http://lte.so-net.ne.jp/sim/0sim/

For my cell phone I use Freetel on my unlocked S4. They do a tiered system on pricing up to 10gb per month and again no throttling. With voice I pay 1000 yen per month and a maximum of 3200 yen if I use 10GB of data. TBH if I didn't need to have a JP cell number for emergencies I wouldn't get one at all. The only drawback I've found so far with them is they don't have a mobile email address, though I've read recently that lots of the other MVNO providers have been upping to 10GB but they throttle and it's not a nice tier system for data usage. They have a promo going on now basically it's 200 yen off each month for 2-3 years. So it's not a bad deal IMHO. On a side note you pay per call with these systems (there are no included minutes for outgoing) but they have an interesting IP phone system which halves the price to 10/yen per 30 seconds but it doesn't go through data it's a prefixed number that gets dialed first (they have an app to help you dial). You can check here https://www.freetel.jp/price/sim/ for details.

I do t have experience but the other provider I heard of was iijmio some of my friends use them, and have had no problems I read that they throttle, but again my friends have said they haven't had issues. I did see they do provide a mobile email address though so it's something to weigh in on.

Just for references all 3 of the services I mentioned are MVNOs for DoCoMo. UQ mobile is an MVNO for AU, not sure about SoftBank. This info is probably useful if you have a locked phone from one of the 3 carriers. You don't need to get it unlocked if you are using an MVNO on that carrier. (I.e an iPhone bought from Docomo can use the any of the 3 services).

If anyone has any questions feel free to PM if they want to keep it private, cell phones, locking, MVNO etc. I generally try to help with these things and read up on cell tech as one of my other hobbies.