Vodafone K.K. and FeliCa Networks today announced the agreement for introduction of Mobile FeliCa to Vodafone Handsets in Japan. Both companies aim to promote new mobile lifestyles with Mobile FeliCa compatible handsets Vodafone K.K. and FeliCa Networks, Inc. have agreed to collaborate in Japan on the introduction and promotion of Mobile FeliCa, a system which enables contactless IC card technology (“FeliCa”) in mobile handsets.
From the WWJ newsletter; This week’s news of lasting importance has to be Tuesday’s joint announcement from Sony, JR East and DoCoMo that DoCoMo’s “Mobile FeliCa” and JR East’s “Suica” epayment systems will be merged into a single “Mobile Suica” service. It hasn’t been easy for consumers to keep track of which device to use, where the cash was coming from (their on-card balance, their on-phone balance or other) and where the payment was going to. (For the full article, access the WWJ Newsletter archives here.)
Vodafone Group, the world’s largest cellphone company by sales, will use its experience with high-speed wireless services in Japan to stay ahead of competitors in less advanced markets, said Shiro Tsuda, who runs the Japanese unit. “Japan is way ahead in 3G,” Tsuda, president of Vodafone K.K., said in an interview Friday.
Mass transit meets mobile technology for Tokyo commuters in a new service enabling NTT DoCoMo FeliCa-equipped i-mode cell phones to function as Suica JR train commuter cards. The new service will combine DoCoMo’s FeliCa smart card e-money platform with the Suica IC train commuter card (both using technology developed by Sony) into one mobile handset that can simultaneously pay for train tickets, commuter passes, airline and movie tickets and purchases at any of 14,000 — and counting — retailers.
East Japan Railway Company (JR East), NTT DoCoMo and Sony today announced they will offer a new service combining DoCoMo’s Mobile FeliCa smart-card handset with JR East’s Suica card starting in January 2006. The “Mobile Suica” service will enable FeliCa-enabled i-mode handsets to be used as Suica cards to board JR trains and make purchases in station shops and kiosks. With the news, two services that started as competitors for ecash settlement-on-the-go appear to have buried the yamakatana. Train-riding, phone-using consumers will have little excuse not to use FeliCa now. The companies said a test of the service will begin March 2005 using pilot i-mode FeliCa handsets.
If the acronym HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) means nothing to you, read on because the technology behind this string of letters could soon significantly change the way you work and play on your mobile device. The technology, a rival to the EV-DO standard in CDMA deployed in the US and parts of Asia, promises something surprisingly missing in early 3G mobile networks — high data speeds similar to those of fixed-line ADSL services.
