Japan's wireless carriers start disaster info service for foreign tourists

Major Japanese wireless carriers recently launched a service to provide foreign tourists with disaster relief information via mobile phone short message service in the event of an earthquake or typhoon.Three mobile phone service operators -- NTT Docomo Inc., KDDI Corp. and SoftBank Corp. -- began the service last Wednesday and will send information such as the number of a visitor hotline run by the Japan National Tourism Organization and the web address of NHK World-Japan, the multilingual broadcasting service, when a disaster occurs.Messages will be written in English, Korean and simplifie…READ FULL ARTICLE