世論 What Japan Thinks

As the amount of free minutes bundled with mobile phones in Japan are limited, indeed it never seems to be a feature of advertising, but on the other hand many people rely on email rather than voice to communicate, this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into fixed line phones reveals something about what choices people have made.

Demographics

On the 11th of April 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 71.2% were male (a high percentage given that this is not their usual employee-only style survey), 0.6% were in their teens, 17.6% were in their twenties, 42.7% in their thrties, 30.0% in their forties, 8.2% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

I’ve not used a public phone for years in Japan, although the mother-in-law does quite often call when she is out. Perhaps we ought to buy her one of these old folk mobile phones and put her on the family plan so we can call freely. However, I don’t think the call volumes justify it, as we have an extremely cheap fixed-line phone plan, so even regular one hour phone calls rarely run up enough of a bill to justify the phone rental costs.

Research results

Q1: Do you have a fixed line phone at home? (Sample size=330)

Yes	79.7%
No (to SQ1)	20.3%

Q1SQ1: Do you have a mobile phone? (Sample size=67)

Yes (to SQ2)	98.5%
No	1.5%

Q1SQ2: If your mobile phone was broken or otherwise not working, what would you do? (Sample size=66, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Use a public phone	49	74.2%
Use phone at work	24	36.4%
Use Skype or other VoIP software	17	25.8%
Use friend’s fixed line or mobile phone	8	12.1%
Use parents’ phone	1	1.5%
Other	10	15.2%