Year: <span>2007</span>
Year: 2007

Year: 2007

SoftBank Group to Trial Femtocell

SoftBank announced they have received a permit from the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications to run femtocell trials. The experiment, using 2GHz belt, will be conducted in partnership with ip.access, Motorola, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson Japan, Samsung, Sonas, Ubiquisys and NEC. Femtocell is a micro cellular phone base station that can be set it up in the home or office and offer mobile handsets voice services via existing fixed-line ADSL connections.

KDDI and Microsoft to Collaborate

KDDI has announced that the company reached an agreement with Microsoft to jointly develop and provide applications using a Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model for corporate users. The companies will also create an ecosystem to provide extensive support to independent software vendor (ISV) partners and spur the development of new service-enabled applications to drive momentum for new SaaS applications. The service will allow customers to access their data on a PC in the office or with a mobile phone when they are on the go.

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Since it’s ‘the big day’ we thought that it would be fitting to post a follow-up to our original comments back in January. While there has been an incredible amount of discussion around this topic over the last few months, the observation below from Russell over at Mowser pretty much sums it up best.

Telecordia Enables KDDI America

Telcordia Technologies announced that it has enabled KDDI America, Inc. to launch a MVNO that offers prepaid services and tariffs targeted to Japanese communities in the United States. KDDI America will be relying on the Telcordia Hosted Solution for MVNOs, which offers pre-paid and post-paid wireless services without having to own or manage a network. KDDI America will specifically be providing a real-time pre-paid service that includes flexible rates on calls to and from Japan.

Telecom Equipment Figures for FY2006

The CIAJ has released their annual Telecommunication Equipment Production and Trade Figures report covering fiscal 2006. The total value of production was pegged at 2.589 billion yen, down 5.7%, slipping back to negative growth for the fiscal year. Growth categories include wireless network equipment posting 212.7 million yen, up 1.2% over the previous year, of which fixed telecommunication devices accounted for 125.6 million yen an increase of 5.6% YoY. Wireline parts posted 19.1 billion yen which reflects a positive growth of 8.5% compared to fiscal 2005.

NEC Develops 8 Megapixel IC

According to this article, NEC has started shipping samples of their new CE131, not to be confused with the AP131, wonder chip for ¥4,000 each with mass production scheduled for October this year. The LSI has an interface for a 512 Mbit external memory, double the capacity used in the existing model, allowing the processing of 8 megapixel image data.

Zentek Partners for DVB-H

Zentek announced a strategic partnership with UDcast to provide the Japanese and Far East Asia markets with DVB-H enabled products. Zentek will act as the reseller and integrator for in these markets to bring the tools for Japanese manufacturers and Asian operators. In Japan, the equipment provided by UDcast and Zentek will enable manufacturers to develop and produce mobile phones, notebooks, chipsets, in-car TV receivers and other devices compatible with DVB-H technology.

NEC Gets WiFi OTA Patent

The USPTO has awarded NEC a patent on their technology for smart file downloads. The technology has been designed for phones with built-in wifi radios – allowing them to connect to any wireless access point. The idea is to have the phone decide, on its own, whether to download a file over-the-air via cellular networks or through a wifi network wireless access point.

DoCoMo Improves Family Plan Discount

DoCoMo President Masao Nakamura announced at a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday that the company will offer a new family-plan package, from August 22, reducing monthly fees in a bid to retain dominant market share. The new Fami-wari MAX plan will enable each subscriber in a family to receive the discount rate of the longest-subscribing family member, or a maximum of 50% for subscribers who have been with DoCoMo for at least 11 years.

SoftBank Charts Fiscal 2007 Plan

SoftBank Corp.’s President Masayoshi Son announced the companies vision going forward during the 27th regular meeting of shareholders held at Tokyo International Forum last week. Topics included an increased focus on contents, as previously signalled by the introduction of Yahoo! Streaming in May, and continued price war on voice services by adding a new total flat-rate calling package between family members to their already popular White Plan. According to their FYE 2006 results SoftBank added 10,000 new 3G base stations over the last fiscal year and plans to achieve a total 46,000 locations – almost on par with DoCoMo – installed by 1H FY2007.