How to use an American iPhone SE with prepaid travel sim in Japan

My Trip to Japan in 2017 Spring

My plan to use an American iPhone in Japan

I am planning to visit Japan this spring for 2 weeks. I am an iPhone SE user here in the USA and planning to use the same phone over there with a prepaid travel sim card.

The details of my iPhone purchased in USA

• model   iPhone SE  A1662  sim-free model purchased from apple.com
• current carrier is Verizon 


Supported LTE bands by this model
• 1 (2100 MHz)
• 2 (1900 MHz)
• 3 (1800 MHz)
• 4 (AWS)
• 5 (850 MHz)
• 8 (900 MHz)
• 12 (700 MHz)
• 13 (700c MHz)
• 17 (700b MHz)
• 18 (800 MHz)
• 19 (800 MHz)
• 20 (800 DD)
• 25 (1900 MHz)
• 26 (800 MHz)
• 29 (700 de MHz)

I purchased a Japanese prepaid sim card at Amazon.com

This is one of the several Japanese prepaid sim cards I found at Amazon.com, eConnect, which is one of NTT DOCOMO's MVNOs.   NTT DOCOMO is Japan's largest mobile phone network. I have used Freetel, another DOCOMO's MVNO before and it worked  fine with my iPhone, and I chose eConnect this time to compare.

The details of eConnect sim

eConnect sim Specs

Band/Frequencies

This sim connects over the 4 bands in Japan shown below (LTE).
• 1 (2100 MHz)
• 3 (1800 MHz)
• 19 (800 MHz)
• 21 (1500MHz)  ---not supported by iPhone SE


I assume the sim will connect over either one of the bands 1, 3, or 19 in Japan.

I can monitor my data usage, top up, notifications, etc through an app, which is a very convenient feature I didn't see with Freetel last time.

Top Up options

• 500MB good for 7days  ￥1200
• 1GB good for 15days  ￥1800
• 2GB good for 30days  ￥2800
• 3GB good for 30days  ￥3800
• 5GB good for 30days  ￥5800
• 100MB daily for 7 days  ￥1800
• 100MB daily for 15 days  ￥2200
• 100MB daily for 30 days  ￥3400

How to Register 

In order to activate this sim card, I downloaded their app called "eConnect Japan."

eConnect prepaid sim card registration starts here.

The process was very easy! Entering the necessary passcode and serial number was done by scanning! I didn't have to copy the lengthy numbers manually.  (←to do this, tap the camera icon.) Also I found it very handy that I can already set the date to start using this sim card. Everything is done! It's like all I need to do when I arrive in Japan is to replace the sim cards in my iPhone.

eConnect prepaid sim card registration ends here.

I will post a review of this sim card when I actually use it. Bye for now!