A Look into NaviDial, Japan's Legacy Phone Service

(tokyodev.com)

32 points | by pwim 3 hours ago

4 comments

  • rtpg 52 minutes ago
    Was kinda curious about the pricing and honestly the pricing[0] seems like one digit less than I expected. 10k JPY for the number, then 1k JPY per some of the various options (stuff like routing seems to be literally "we set up a phone tree and at the end of the phone tree we just dial a number you give us")

    So it sounds like in the end you need to pay 10k JPY per queue + an extra bit of money to wire it all together. Maybe with Twilio you can set up something similarly fire-and-forget but "I explain to Docomo once how to set up my phone tree" sounds nicer than "I set up a twilio... thingy".

    I'm sure somebody out there has at least considered being the layer over Twilio that just offers some of these straightforward services... but... toll-free numbers on Twilio cost 27 cents a minute in Japan. Sounds real close to that 33 yen.[1]

    [0]: https://www.ntt.com/business/services/voice-video/freedial-n...

    [1]: https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/jp

  • jjmarr 57 minutes ago
    If the suicide prevention hotline cost $15/hr in the USA people would freak out! But since it's Japan it's whatever.
  • Jamesbeam 53 minutes ago
    Just wanted to leave a comment that I really enjoy reading the articles about how the Japanese solve or create infrastructure problems for their ageing conservative society posted on here the past few weeks.

    Also read a very interesting piece about the railway system the other day. Thank you for providing a valuable perspective I wouldn’t get access to otherwise and also proposing possible solutions and practical advise for your fellow citizens. Keep up the good work.