Year: <span>2010</span>
Year: 2010

Japan Trials RCS Initiative

The GSMA today reported significant progress with its Rich Communication Suite (RCS) initiative, a service that provides mobile operators with a feature-rich portfolio of interoperable communication services, enabling customers to access a wide range of advanced messaging applications direct from their handset’s contact list.

KDDI Invests in American MVNOs

KDDI America has entered into separate agreements with American MVNOs (Note (1)) Locus Telecommunications, Inc. (Hereinafter referred to as “Locus.”) on January 19th, 2010, and Total Call International, Inc. (Hereinafter referred to as Total Call) on January 21st, 2010 to invest in the respective companies.

In accordance to the above mentioned agreement, KDDI America, Inc. will acquire a combined total of USD 41M (JPY 3.7B) of issued shares corresponding to 51% of the number of shares issued by the respective companies, and plans to make them as consolidated subsidiaries (Note 3). Through the aforementioned pair of investments, KDDI and the KDDI Group plan to enter the mobile service segment offering services to migrants residing in the U.S.—a promising growth market—to further expand the companies’ global business base.

DoCoMo to Demo LTE handset at MWC

According to this PC World report, DoCoMo plans to demonstrate a prototype handset running LTE technology at this month’s Mobile World Congress exhibition in Barcelona. The demonstration at Barcelona will be running on a prototype LTE chip developed by the four companies, said NEC. The chip was first demonstrated in October in concept data cards, and its appearance at Barcelona will be the first time it’s appeared in a handset.

Sandvine Lands NTT DoCoMo Contract

Network equipment maker Sandvine Corp (SVC.TO) received a contract from Japan’s NTT Communications Corp to deploy its Policy Traffic Switch (PTS) on NTT’s high speed network in Japan, sending Sandvine’s shares up as much as 13 percent. The PTS platform provides broadband and wireless network operators with services like capacity planning and quota management.

KDDI to Offer Mobile Insurance Plans

KDDI is planning to roll out the “au Femtocell” – a miniature base station to be used indoors by summer 2010, and will commence trial operations in locations throughout the Kanto region beginning March 2010. “au Femtocell” is a miniature base station that creates a small mobile coverage area of a radius of approximately 10 meters; the service will be offered to the consumer market.