TOKYO-The millennium bug was squashed in most industries around the world, with one exception in wireless.
Due to a Y2K glitch, short message service (SMS) messages on some types of terminals used by Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo’s customers were eliminated. About 400 complaints about the problem were sent to NTT DoCoMo on 1 January, 2000.
According to the country’s largest wireless carrier, some types of NTT DoCoMo cellular phone terminals recognize SMS messages received in 2000 as older messages than those received in the 1900s due to Y2K problems.
Each of these terminals can hold up to 40 messages.
When users keep more than 40 messages on a terminal, newly received messages in 2000 are deleted. When the number of messages is less than 40, new messages received after 1 January, 2000, are displayed after the list of last year’s mail.
To counter the problem, NTT DoCoMo is recommending its users delete old messages that the terminal received in 1999.
The cellular terminals with the problems are N203, N206, N206S, N207, N207S, N601ps, N153 and N157, all of which are manufactured by NEC, and the M206, which NEC produces for Motorola under an original equipment manufacturer agreement.
NTT DoCoMo said it checked all the defective cellular terminals before the new year; however, the carrier did not find the SMS problem in NEC terminals.
In a series of 1999 examinations, NTT DoCoMo found that three other cellular terminals from three different manufacturers had similar problems. However, the carrier notified the public about the defect through the Internet and other channels before the new year.
According to NTT DoCoMo, about 1.8 million people have the defective terminals, and 1 million of those use the SMS service.
To cope with Y2K problems, 9,500 total employees in the Japanese telecom industry were at their offices and service sites during the date turnover. However, no serious problems were reported, other than network congestion due to new year calls.
Cellular operators IDO and DDI both reported problems with Kyocera terminals failing to display a date or displaying the wrong date around the new year, although Kyocera said the problems were not Y2K related and were due to programming mistakes.
