Year: <span>2005</span>
Year: 2005

Year: 2005

NTT DoCoMo to Stop Accepting New Prepaid Mobile Phone Applications

DoCoMo announced today that the companies will stop accepting new applications for “Pre-Call®” prepaid mobile phones on March 31, 2005. From April, the company will suggest to users that they subscribe to alternative services, such as mobile phone rental services or “Limit Plus,” which enables users to limit monthly charges. DoCoMo launched the Pre-Call service in May 1999. The number of subscribers peaked at about 210,000 in March 2001, after which the number began decreasing. About 80,000 customers were using the service as of January 2005.

Sprint and Sanyo Introduce the MM-5600 Mobile Phone

Sprint and Sanyo announced today the Sprint PCS Vision(SM) Multimedia Phone MM-5600 by Sanyo at this year’s Photo Marketing Association Annual Convention and Trade Show. The MM-5600 by Sanyo allows customers to listen to stereo-quality music; take, share and print quality photos; and view the latest video content from nationally recognized brands in the news and entertainment industry at up to 15 frames per second with the built-in media player, all from a single device.

ACCESS NetFront Global Profile Selected for First Motorola i-Mode Handset Deploy

ACCESS announced that its NetFront i-mode Global Profile integrated software solution has been selected by Motorola for deployment in its E378i handset. This innovative handset will initially be offered by leading Spanish mobile operator Telefónica Móviles, with additional carrier deployments to follow.

Sony Ericsson V800 awarded ''Best 3G Handset''

The Sony Ericsson V800 camera phone was awarded the prestigious award for ?Best 3G Handset” during the GSM Association?s 2005 Awards evening at the 3GSM World Congress. The Sony Ericsson V800 was called the first true convergence handset in the world when announced in 2004. It can access 3G services all around the world and is sold in Europe (as V800) and also in Japan (as Vodafone 802SE). This is the second year in a row that Sony Ericsson has taken home a product award; in 2004 the T610 was awarded “Best handset, terminal or device”.

DoCoMo to Exit PHS Business

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan’s largest mobile operator, plans to exit its money-losing personal handyphone system (PHS) business in two to three years and focus on its core mobile-phone service, the Nihon Keizai reported on Thursday. However, in an unusual move, DoCoMo’s International PR made the following comment about that report. The business daily said DoCoMo would stop accepting new customers for PHS as early as April.

WiMAX Coming to Japan

Yozan Inc, a pager and PHS service provider, recently announced that it would start a fixed-rate public wireless LAN service partly based on the WiMAX wireless communication standard, in December 2005. Ahead of the service launch, Yozan is starting field tests in the Tokyo metropolitan area in June 2005. This is the first WiMAX service plan announced in Japan. The company plans to have developed 600 core basestations and 4,000 relay stations within Tokyo’s 23 wards by December 2005.