Wifi services disrupted throughout Japan!

I am beyond frustrated!! Last year I joined Softbank to get “pocket wifi” which is mobile wifi (see the picture above). This little thing can support 10 gadgets at one time and it has been amazing….until a few days ago.  I woke up the other day, turned on my computer and then turned on my little wifi gadget. Nothing. It didn’t work. My husband spent an hour on the phone with someone at Softbank fiddling with things on the computer. Sometimes it looked like it connected but it wasn’t really connected.  Very strange since it has worked perfectly for more than a year.  I went to work which is in the same city and it worked absolutely fine when I used it on my laptop there. But that night at home, nada…nothing…zip! So, the next day we phoned the company again to complain. While my husband was waiting to talk to someone, he checked twitter and sure enough people throughout Japan were complaining. Still it seemed that no one at Softbank knew what was going on.  I was complaining to my boss about it and he said that there had been nothing in the news about it.

I went home last night and my husband said it had been in the news. Apparently, there is a Broadcasting company called “BS” (I know….WTH kind of name is that?) and they are making a new digital channel and it has completely disrupted all the wifi in Japan. Sometimes I can use it and sometimes I can’t.  Right now, I’m typing this in Microsoft Word instead of directly onto blogspot like I normally do as I’m too afraid of losing my wifi and therefore losing the post. I can’t believe it is ok for 1 company to be able to completely disrupt all the wifi in Japan because it isn’t just Softbank that is having trouble. Emobile and AU customers are also complaining. You would think that since they aren’t able to fulfill their end of a contract that we would be able to get out of it (all contracts here are 2 years) but apparently the contract we signed (which I can’t read so hubby signed it as it is paid via his credit card) says that they don’t guarantee service just that they will do their best. WTF?

So….I guess we will have to wait and see but this is absolute crap in my opinion. I can’t run my business without the Internet. Something will have to change or what will happen to wifi in Japan?