Image: NTT Docomo's Yoyogi Building in Tokyo, which houses switching equipment for the carrier's mobile network. Image: Wikimedia Commons / Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0
📌 Key Highlights
- NTT Docomo's 5G standalone (5G SA) service — voice calls, data and SMS — was unstable nationwide from around 10:30 a.m. JST (7 a.m. IST) on Wednesday 11 November 2026.
- The carrier confirmed the service was fully restored as of 7:17 p.m. JST (3:47 p.m. IST), after gradual recovery from around 4:30 p.m. JST — a disruption of roughly eight and a half hours.
- Cause: congestion in switching equipment serving 5G SA subscribers, according to Docomo. The company says it found no evidence of unauthorised access or a cyberattack.
- Other 5G and 4G services, and mobile services from businesses using Docomo's network, were unaffected. Emergency calls were not affected.
- Second nationwide 5G SA outage in less than a week: the first, on 5–6 November, lasted about 14 hours and hit around 1.5 million customers. Docomo has not disclosed how many subscribers were hit this time.
What happened in the NTT Docomo outage?
NTT Docomo, Japan's largest mobile carrier, said on Wednesday that customers across Japan were having trouble using its standalone 5G service, known as 5G SA — the high-speed, high-capacity network that handles calls, data and text messaging for customers on that plan. The problems began at around 10:30 a.m. local time, and by the afternoon the carrier was still investigating the cause, with no restoration time announced.
Normal service gradually resumed from around 4:30 p.m. JST, and Docomo later confirmed the service was fully restored as of 7:17 p.m. JST (3:47 p.m. IST). Customers still experiencing problems were advised to restart their phones or turn airplane mode on and off. Kyodo News reported the restoration on Wednesday evening in Japan, and Jiji Press confirmed the disruption had been largely resolved.
Timeline: how the 11 November outage unfolded
| Time (JST / IST) | What happened |
|---|---|
| ~10:30 a.m. JST / 7 a.m. IST, 11 Nov | 5G SA voice calls, data and SMS become unstable nationwide; Docomo says the cause is under investigation. |
| ~4:30 p.m. JST / 1 p.m. IST, 11 Nov | Normal service gradually resumes, according to Jiji Press. |
| 7:17 p.m. JST / 3:47 p.m. IST, 11 Nov | Docomo confirms the 5G SA service is fully restored; customers with lingering problems are told to restart their phones or toggle airplane mode. |
| 9:52 p.m. JST / 6:22 p.m. IST, 11 Nov | Kyodo News reports the full restoration, with congestion in switching equipment named as the cause and no evidence of a cyberattack. |
Image: An NTT Docomo-branded handset (illustrative). Image: Wikimedia Commons / Mytho88, CC BY-SA 4.0
Why it matters: a second outage in less than a week
The timing is what makes this outage hard to dismiss as a one-off. Just six days earlier, on 5 November, Docomo's 5G SA service went unstable nationwide at around 11:18 a.m. JST and stayed down for about 14 hours, until around 1:20 a.m. JST on 6 November, affecting around 1.5 million customers who had signed up separately for the service. That outage was also blamed on congestion in switching equipment. Docomo President Yoshiaki Maeda apologised at a news conference on Friday 7 November for that disruption — and for a separate customer-data leak confirmed the same week. Our full explainer on last week's outage and the separate customer-data leak is here.
That leak is a separate incident: Docomo confirmed on 5 November that unauthorised access to its Docomo Online Shop and My docomo services exposed up to about 300,000 customer records, including email addresses, identity document numbers and, for some customers, bank account numbers. The company has said the leak and the network outages are unrelated, and no confirmed misuse of the leaked data had been reported.
Two nationwide failures of the same service in six days raises obvious questions about the resilience of Docomo's 5G SA switching infrastructure — and about whether the fixes applied after the first outage were enough. Docomo has not disclosed how many subscribers were affected this time, or what it will change before the next failure.
Should you care?
What to do if your 5G SA is still unstable
Docomo's advice is simple: restart your phone, or turn airplane mode on and off, which forces the handset to re-register on the network. If problems persist, switch to 4G in your phone's network settings as a workaround — regular 5G and 4G services were unaffected throughout. Docomo Online Shop and My docomo users should also watch for the company's notices about the separate data leak, and change their account password if they have not done so since 5 November.
FAQs
Is the NTT Docomo 5G outage over?
Yes. Docomo confirmed its 5G standalone service was fully restored as of 7:17 p.m. JST (3:47 p.m. IST) on Wednesday 11 November 2026. If your phone still struggles, restart it or toggle airplane mode on and off.
What caused the NTT Docomo outage?
Docomo says congestion in switching equipment serving 5G SA subscribers caused the problems. The company found no evidence of unauthorised access or a cyberattack, and the same cause was blamed for the earlier outage on 5–6 November.
Was this the same outage as last week's?
No. This is a second, separate outage: the first ran from about 11:18 a.m. JST on 5 November to about 1:20 a.m. JST on 6 November (around 14 hours, ~1.5 million customers), while this one ran from about 10:30 a.m. to 7:17 p.m. JST on 11 November (around eight and a half hours).
Was customer data stolen in the outage?
No — the outage itself involved no data theft, according to Docomo. Separately, the company confirmed on 5 November that unauthorised access to its online shop and My docomo services exposed up to about 300,000 customer records; the two incidents are unrelated, and no confirmed misuse of the leaked data had been reported.
Takeaway: NTT Docomo's 5G standalone service is back after a second nationwide outage in less than a week — about eight and a half hours down, blamed on switching-equipment congestion, with no cyberattack involved. The repeat failure, not this single outage, is the story to watch.
Read our explainer on last week's NTT Docomo outage and the separate customer-data leak for the full background.
Comments
Post a Comment