A Look into NaviDial, Japan's Legacy Phone Service

> NaviDial is an example of how infrastructure can outlive its original context. In 1997, it was a genuinely innovative service that solved a lot of problems for corporations while keeping costs affordable.

Was it? FreeDial sounds like it was innovative and NaviDial sounds predatory. NaviDial was actually the complete opposite of "innovative", it just changed who paid with completely predictable results.

I would be incessed if I had to pay money to talk to (or sit on hold!) with a company I do business with like that. I have never in my life called a 1-900 number and can't imagine a scenario in which I would.

The idea of charging for access to suicide/domestic abuse lines feels so wrong, I can't imagine why the Japanese people stand for it. Then again, I'm sure they would look over at the US with are "you really want to go there" look and be justified...

Was kinda curious about the pricing and honestly the pricing[0] seems like one digit less than I expected. 10k JPY for the number, then 1k JPY per some of the various options (stuff like routing seems to be literally "we set up a phone tree and at the end of the phone tree we just dial a number you give us")

So it sounds like in the end you need to pay 10k JPY per queue + an extra bit of money to wire it all together. Maybe with Twilio you can set up something similarly fire-and-forget but "I explain to Docomo once how to set up my phone tree" sounds nicer than "I set up a twilio... thingy".

I'm sure somebody out there has at least considered being the layer over Twilio that just offers some of these straightforward services... but... toll-free numbers on Twilio cost 27 cents a minute in Japan. Sounds real close to that 33 yen.[1]

[0]: https://www.ntt.com/business/services/voice-video/freedial-n...

[1]: https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/jp

I ran into this recently with ANA (All Nippon Airways). [1] There’s no better way to kill customer loyalty than to make than make someone wait 45 minutes holding on a charged phone call to make a basic change to a reservation that should be possible on the website (they also refuse to handle reservation-specific inquiries over email).

Just had a look and JAL (Japan Airlines) also doesn’t offer a FreeCall number. I haven’t had reason to call them yet though, so not sure if hold times are as bad as ANA. ANA recently redid their website and it’s a flaming pile of garbage (I could go on another whole rant here about all the ways it’s broken), which I suspect may be increasing call volumes for the past year or so.

[1] https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/guide/contact/international/inte...

If the suicide prevention hotline cost $15/hr in the USA people would freak out! But since it's Japan it's whatever.

Just wanted to leave a comment that I really enjoy reading the articles about how the Japanese solve or create infrastructure problems for their ageing conservative society posted on here the past few weeks.

Also read a very interesting piece about the railway system the other day. Thank you for providing a valuable perspective I wouldn’t get access to otherwise and also proposing possible solutions and practical advise for your fellow citizens. Keep up the good work.