NTT Docomo has its quirks from the customer POV (in particular they are pricy), but as a company I see them as stellar and incredibly flexible in their operating context.

I mean, they brought customer installable java apps way earlier to the game, and it was miles ahead of the crap J2ME that stack of western phones. They brought imode when other countries where toying with wap. Then NFC based electronic payment years before anyone else, GPS apps etc.

I worked with one of their phone QA team for a while, and they were unsurprisingly pragmatic, very clever on the trade-offs and cared a lot more about what you had to say than if you came with a white shirt.

As much as NTT can be a very old and dusty company, NTT Docomo was at least for a very long time a very dynamic and forward thinking company.

I don’t think they are any worse than any comparable regional largest telcos in the world ... better than SoftBank at least.

Looks like Japan's telco sector is going through a US T-Mobile moment, with Rakuten Mobile trying to drive the prices down with a free year of service and a cheap prepaid unlimited data plan, chock full with change and hope rhetoric. They even use practically the same color as T-Mobile!