The so-called “SIM lock” system has been such a pain not only for those of us traveling to Japan but also for the Japanese people travelling abroad. It is a strategy imposed by Japan’s service carriers (NTT Docomo, KDDI, Softbank) to prevent consumers to use other handsets using a rival network but it also translates as you cannot swap your own SIM card into a Japanese handset as Japanese service carriers sell handsets that only accept their own respective SIM cards.

However, according to latest reports Japanese government has set to review this current “SIM Lock” system imposed by the Japanese cellphone carriers. Sounds very exciting but we‘d better be rather moderately excited as we heard this story/rumor 2 years ago as well.