KDDI Hits India, Attacks Viruses

KDDI seems to have heard its master’s voice and has just announced that it is following Qualcomm into India. In a separate announcement, KDDI also said it was introducing anti-virus measures into its phones in 2005. KDDI said today, January 19, that it is forming Indo-Fuji Information Technology Pvt. Ltd. with Fujitsu Platform Technologies taking a 12% stake, to provide network construction and spice up international data transmission services for the rapidly exploding Indian market.

India has been a big success story for the cheap and cheerful Qualcomm upgrade route, and the move by KDDI follows Qualcomm’s announcement on Jan. 9 that it is opening up an engineering center for software development this year to push cdma deeper into the Indian interior.

India watchers will note that Reliance Communications /Tata Teleservices started cdma 2000 1x-based services in India last year and subscribers grew to 8 million, exceeding Qualcomm’s predictions of 6 million. By the end of 2004, Big-Q expects the number of CDMA subscribers hit to reach 20 million. Qualcomm was recently over there drumming up business with Reliance Info, Tata, Shyam, Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar, and pusing up the ante, Reliance Info is believed to be launching EV-DO trials, so its obvious that a so a big push in India is on.

KDDI has also announced that its following DoCoMo’s move with Network Associates to, we hope, kick some viral bottoms in the mobile space.

Details are not clear about exactly what KDDI is up to, but the moves are very welcome, and it’s nice to see the carrier being proactive with this. From what we have heard, KDDI will attempt to monitor and kick the blighters out of its system on a network level, trying to avoid embroiling us in the constant anti-virus software upgrades we have become used to downloading. And no moans from editorial about that either, we’re thankful that the downloads are there!

On the other hand, the service looks as if its not going to be free, but a charged option for subscribers-and that’s a real pity, but perhaps inevitable.

Tags: CDMA, DoCoMo, Fujitsu, kddi, Qualcomm

Posted: 19 January 2004 | Filed: Editor's Note, Wireless Internet | Feedback | Print |