Wireless Internet
Wireless Internet

Dell Making MVNO Move in Japan?

Mark over at TechRadar has a post on recent rumblings by Dell in the UMPC space. We have seen the increasing push to sell flat-rate data subscriptions – primed by ‘free’ mini laptop hooked to two-year contract – over the last six months (from all operators offering several OEM models) but this is the first whiff of an MVNO play. According to the article, machine will go on sale here this summer with internal HSDPA cards which allow max. downlink speeds of 7.2Mbps for an estimated $500. While there is no indication of on-going access fees, the current typical all you can surf account runs about $40 per month. Now that would be interesting!

Alternative WLAN Access Offer

JCI will start a new fixed-rate data service with a fee of approx 10-cents per minute on March 23, 2009. “Doccica” will use DoCoMo’s 3G network combined with public wireless LAN access points from several established providers. Subscribers are required to purchase a USB dongle manufactured by ZTE Corp., for approx US$150, including a pre-paid fee of for the first 500 minutes. WWJ conducted a video interview with Sanda-san, way back in 2002, about the mvno’s B-Mobile product offering.

CocoTan – iPhone 3G Location App

NTT Com held a press conference to announce their new free push-type service that feeds information about nearby places of interest to iPhone and iTouch owners who also subscribe to the companies HOTSPOT WLAN flat-rate data package offering. The new service, named Cocotan! taken from Japanese koko “here” and tan “search”, automatically provides a list of recommendations based on the clients access point matched to a database of consumer-generated content, including blogs and Web reviews, for restaurants etc. located near-by.

NEC Announces Global Deal with IQ

NEC Corp. and Carrier IQ confirmed that they have formed a global partnership agreement. The companies have integrated Carrier IQ’s multi-vendor compatible Mobile Service Intelligence technology alongside NEC’s leading Device Management products for mobile OEMs and carriers, and will jointly promote the integrated products world-wide.

Opera Releases Mini Mobile Report

Opera has posted it’s Q1 2008 mobile browser report indicating the top 10 sites visited from the top 10 countries, ranked by usage. The findings published show that social networking, search and major content portals are the most popular across all regions, no surprise, however the absense of results from Japan should certainly raise some eyebrows?

Renesas Considers Taking FOMA Global

According to this report, Renesas is interested in offering the FOMA platform as a handset reference design to companies outside Japan. FOMA, or Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access, is Docomo’s 3G network standard design followed all Japanese handset makers that provide cellphones to DoCoMo. Considering the vested interest of Renesas in SH-Mobile this ‘news’ is not surprising. However, it does indicate that more players and products are gearing up for the shift towards LTE.

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC Announce JV

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC announced the start of a broad collaboration to market advanced end-to-end communications solutions. Alcatel-Lucent and NEC have decided to form a joint venture that will focus on the development of Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband access solutions. Through this joint development effort, the two companies intend to accelerate the availability of next-generation wireless solutions.

SoftBank Looking for a Nifty WiMax Partner

Softbank Corp. is in the final stage of talks with access service provider Nifty Corp., and other firms, on a plan to set up a new joint company in order to apply for a 2.5GHz spectrum license. Other possible partners are broadband service provider eAccess Ltd. and Internet access providers So-net Entertainment Corp., NEC Biglobe Ltd and FreeBit Co., according to this report on EE Times.