KDDI WINs With Mobile Flat Rate; and Half-Price Calls to Mom

They’ve gone and done it now! KDDI’s just announced a double whammy; on November 28, the company will offer 3G’s first flat-rate packet services with all you can surf for 4,200 yen (about $37) on the souped-up, 2.4-Mbps (max) EV-DO version of CDMA 1X that KDDI has branded “WIN” (We Innovate the Next) - presumably to beat up on DoCoMo’s W-CDMA-based FOMA. Then, today, it said it was halving the cost of calls from KDDI Au mobile subscribers to KDDI ADSL/ IP home phones on the Dion Service. The knives are out! With three new service innovations, two new terminals, and a data card, the company appears to be following what Kenshi Tazaki, vice president and team manager of Gartner Research Japan, calls a “high risk strategy” (think of all those potential lost packet charges!). Will Big D respond in kind just as it was hoping to glean megabucks from FOMA users? “It’s a very aggressive shot at DoCoMo and stakes out a clear position by KDDI in the mobile market,” says Tazaki.