Dial Q2 was a premium-rate information service that NTT launched in 1989. Callers dialed numbers beginning with 0990 to hear weather forecasts, horoscopes, stock prices, sports results, and adult content. The information provider set the fee, and NTT collected it on the telephone bill together with the call charge.
Dial Q2 caused serious social problems during the 1990s. Children called adult lines over and over, and their families were left with heavy bills. Malicious programs known as dialers posed as dial-up access points for online services and quietly rerouted personal computers to 0990 numbers or to international numbers, so the user found out about the charges only when the bill arrived.
In response, NTT made restrictions available, such as barring outgoing calls behind a PIN, so that children could not reach these numbers on their own. Demand then drained away as the internet replaced the telephone as the way people looked things up, and NTT closed Dial Q2 in February 2014.
The lasting lesson of Dial Q2 is the billing structure itself: an information fee stacked on top of the call charge. The exclusion of 0570 numbers from unlimited-call plans and disputes over in-app purchases have the same shape, because the user cannot easily see how much is piling up. Call charges sets out who pays what for each type of number.
Numbers beginning with 0990 lost their role when the service closed in February 2014. As of 2026, then, a notice claiming that an unpaid 0990 information fee is outstanding is not a bill for any service in operation. Before paying anything you do not recognize, ask the carrier you have a contract with, and treat it as fictitious billing if that is what it turns out to be. Extinct phone numbers revisits the Dial Q2 era.