Phone-sex ads disrupted mobile phone connections.

OSAKA - japan Asahi in english:
Phone sex telemarketing to mobile phones allegedly jumbled up telephone lines Monday morning in Osaka Prefecture and Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, NTT West said.

A sharp rise in calls around 10 a.m. hampered nearly 5.16 million phone numbers. Yes I said 'million' this is japan after all.

Complaints of jammed phone lines began flooding Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) West around 10:30 a.m, when the company blocked as many as 50 percent of all calls, on both cellphone and landline. NTT West partially lifted the restrictions at 11:42 a.m.

At 10:59 a.m., the company cut off the phone lines to a so-called one-call telemarketing company based in Osaka.

The firm had made thousands of calls to mobile phones that morning......

The Osaka company caused a similar problem on July 15, when it made 90,000 calls per hour to random mobile phone numbers from its 216 telephone connections. NTT West had requested the company to restrain its calls in July.

One-call phone telemarketing, or "one-giri,'' as it is known, lures phone owners to call back by calling mobile phones and hanging up after one ring. When the curious users see the incoming call number recorded on the phone, they call back, only to hear an advertisement for a match-making Internet site or a guide to telephone sex.

In some cases, callers can be charged as much as 100,000 yen, if the phone owner proceeds with the instructions.

Such calls are not illegal, but Osaka police are warning phone owners to hang up immediately if calling back an unfamiliar number leads them to a questionable situation.

(IHT/Asahi: July 30,2002)