Japan's communications ministry on Wednesday issued an administrative order to KDDI Corp. demanding the company do more to prevent another network outage on the scale of the one that affected at least 30.91 million people last month.

The outage, caused by Japan's second-largest mobile carrier by subscribers, lasted more than 60 hours and disrupted calls and mobile internet, banking systems, the transmission of weather data, parcel deliveries and network-connected cars.

Communications minister Yasushi Kaneko the same day revealed a plan to launch a study panel as early as September with an eye to allowing telecom companies to access each other's networks at the time of an emergency, a practice commonly called roaming.

Discussions about the implementation of roaming services came up after the outage left phone users unable to dial emergency numbers such as 110 or 119 for an extended period of time.

Kaneko said his ministry plans to decide on the basic direction of the reform by the end of the year and will also request other mobile carriers to conduct emergency checks on their networks to prevent a similar accident.

He handed a physical copy of the administrative order to KDDI President Makoto Takahashi while meeting him at the ministry.

"We will do our utmost to ensure a similar problem will never happen and bring the occurrence of disruptions to near zero," Takahashi told reporters afterward.

The outage began at 1:35 a.m. on July 2 and lasted until 3 p.m. on July 4, a total of 61 hours and 25 minutes, according to an incident report the company submitted to the ministry.

The failure, which the ministry labeled a serious incident, occurred because maintenance workers used a wrong work procedure manual during equipment maintenance, according to KDDI.

The company was instructed by the ministry to properly manage such manuals and also ensure steps be taken to restore services in case of a similar incident as the latest outage.

The ministry also demanded KDDI share with other mobile carriers why such a failure occurred and inform the public in a timelier manner information such as when the network would be restored.

KDDI said Friday it will pay damages to 36.55 million customers, including those contracted to its group company, as a form of "apology," saying it will reduce individual bills by 200 yen ($1.50).

Total damages are expected to reach over 7 billion yen, it said.

==Kyodo

© Kyodo News International, Inc., source Newswire