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Messaging Giant Line Becomes a Phone Carrier in Japan

Posted by msmash on from the rising-sun dept.

Popular instant messaging service, Line, is entering the mobile carrier business in Japan. The company says that its carrier will utilise telecommunications infrastructure of major Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo and start at an affordable price of 500 yen (roughly $4.40) a month. Jon Fingas reports for Engadget: As of this summer, Japanese residents can subscribe to Line Mobile and get unlimited use of not only Line's chat and call services, but the "main features" (browsing and posts) of Facebook and Twitter.

10 comments

  1. Does it include the main features of Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like getting first posts?

    1. Re:Does it include the main features of Slashdot? by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

      If you prefer a first post about the Barbie Liberation Organization... choose this one!!

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      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
    2. Re:Does it include the main features of Slashdot? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, Line won't support Slashdot, since being a Japanese service, it requires Unicode support.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Does it include the main features of Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I, for one, am proud of Slashdot for taking a stand against the undemocratic, unjust, and abusive monopoly that is Unicode.
      Face it. Unicode is such bloated garbage that there is no such thing as a complete Unicode font that implements all the Unicode codepoints.
      You can write up a bunch of valid Unicode text, and have no guarantee whatsoever that anyone's computer can even read it.

    4. Re:Does it include the main features of Slashdot? by kamapuaa · · Score: 2

      Japanese Slashdot, maybe?

      --
      Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  2. meanwhile in Canada... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Rogers still sells data starting at 10mb, yes ten.

    1. Re:meanwhile in Canada... by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

      And they charge way more than 5.87 Canadian dollars for it.

  3. Messaging Giant Line Becomes . . . by swell · · Score: 2

    What does that mean?

    We're mostly adults here we don't need SCREAMING HEADLINES. When every word starts with a capital letter, then capital letters have no meaning. Use them as a grownup would please.

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...
  4. Line sucks balls by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Line sucks balls:
    - you can't use it in a PC. There is a PC version, but to start it you have to enter a random key that you get sent via cellphone, making it useless.
    - you can't use it in more than one mobile device (tablet/cellphone)
    - the app will crash in the registration process, or not even start unless you have the latest version of android/iphone

    With so many alternatives, the only reason why this has succeeded in Japan is because of their good support for Japanese (and Korean), and their cute characters, which of course is a *must* in Japan.

    I won't miss it when they cease to exist.

  5. Huh, pretty cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's pretty much an AOL style lockin, but the rate certainly will NTT & such a run for their money. When I was over there a few years ago, NTT was always outside of my finances. A couple months services could easily be the same cost as a brand new iPhone. Something like this is interesting to get into the market. However it's more in competition with Softbank than NTT Docomo.