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Carriers

OhmyNews Japan Debuts

OhmyNews received investment funds of US$10 million from Softbank, led by CEO Masayoshi Son, last February. It established a branch in Tokyo and finally launched OhmyNews Japan, utilizing $5 million of these funds. OhmyNews Japan has been recruiting citizen reporters since last month. Until now, approximately 1,000 citizen reporters have joined OhmyNews Japan. Shuntaro Torigoe (66), a well-known journalist in Japan who previously worked with the Mainichi Daily newspaper, was appointed as the chief editor of OhmyNews Japan. The Japan website currently has 22 employees, including 10 staff reporters. The first issue of OhmyNews published yesterday with about 20 articles written by citizen reporters.

KDDI Launches New Handsets and 3G Services

KDDI - 12 New Handsets with Massive 3G Services LaunchKDDI today launched the first strike in Japan’s mobile number portability wars with no less than 10 press releases announced today at Tokyo’s ultra buttoned-down Imperial Hotel. The line-up of phones and services includes new units from Casio (W43CA), Hitachi (W43H), Kyocera (W43K and W44K), Sanyo (W42SA, W43SA and A5522SA), Sharp (W41SH), Sony Ericsson (W43S) and Toshiba (W45T and W47T), plus a new in-house designer model (also by Toshiba) code named Drape.

The accompanying new data offerings unveiled today include a scrolling news service (ala i-channel) and mobile video conferencing, the first such service from KDDI (which, until now, has philosophically posited that video conferencing was not suited for mobile), as well as several improved mobile music and digital TV offerings.

KDDI Labs Unveil Mobile Motion Sensor

KDDI R&D Labs have developed a software only motion sensor function for their BREW driven OS handset fleet. Early motion-capable models, such as the V603SH for Vodafone by Sharp, required additional on-board hardware to calculate spatial information in order to perform operations simply by moving the handset up, down, left or right. According to the company statement potential applications include menu navigation, gaming and enhanced location mapping services.

DoCoMo to Start HSDPA with N902iX Handset

DoCoMo just announced that they will launch a High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) service on August 31, when they start sales of Japan’s first HSDPA-compatible handset, the 3G FOMA N902iX HIGH-SPEED. In FOMA HIGH-SPEED areas, the N902iX is capable of packet downlinks of up to 3.6Mbps, approximately 10 times faster than current FOMA handsets. From August 31, all of central Tokyo will be included in these HIGH-SPEED areas, and all major Japanese cities will be covered by the end of October.

KDDI Confirms Network Upgrade

KDDI has announced it would invest 200 billion yen ($1.73 billion) over the next three years on upgrading its network to CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A technology. KDDI’s Y200bn network upgrade will begin in December with consumers in urban areas benefiting first. Its total investment budget for the year ending March 2007 is Y333bn, a 21 per cent increase on the 2005-06 budget.

DoCoMo Dealing with 3G Data Congestion

NTT DoCoMo and it’s regional subsidiaries announced today that they would separately manage call and data packet transmission congestion over the 3G FOMA network to prevent voice traffic congestion control from affecting packet communication traffic and vice versa. Currently, excessive congestion in either voice or data transmissions can force DoCoMo to limit network usage for both voice and data in order to prevent network breakdown.