Softbank Corp. plans to start a nationwide video broadcasting service for mobile phones by the end of 2012, Softbank officials said Wednesday. The Internet services firm, which will enter the mobile phone market in spring 2007, will ask the telecommunications ministry for a broadcasting license as early as next year, the officials said. Softbank plans to succeed by using a range of attractive broadcast programs, including its own productions, they said.
NTT, Japan’s largest telecommunications group, plans to test WiMax technology as early as next month. Group companies will work together on trials of WiMax technology, said Masao Nakamura, president and CEO of NTT DoCoMo. Nakamura, who shared only a few details of the planned tests, confirmed that NTT DoCoMo would be one of the participants. Previously, NTT DoCoMo said it intended to push the 3G technology WCDMA to faster speeds. The “Super 3G” service will offer data transmission rates as high as 100Mbit/s and could be available in metropolitan areas as soon as 2008.
NTT DoCoMo just announced three prototype high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) handsets developed with Fujitsu, Motorola (Wow!) and NEC. HSDPA, a high-speed packet transmission technology standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project, offers a theoretical maximum downlink speed of about 14 Mbps. The handsets will be demonstrated at DoCoMo’s booth at the 3GSM World Congress 2006 in Barcelona, Spain from February 13 to 16.
DoCoMo aims to start HSDPA services sometime between July and September 2006 (as per our recent bold prediction for 2006 — Eds).
Vodafone K.K. announced today that, from 10:00 AM on 1 February 2006, Web communication fees will be toll-free when accessing the Disaster Message Board Service. First launched in April 2005, the Disaster Message Board Service lets customers confirm the safety of their family and friends via Vodafone live! in the event of a major disaster. To let customers get familiar with the details and methods of using the Disaster Message Board Service, Vodafone K.K. offers a trial service available on the first day of every month (excluding the month of January). Customers will also be able to use this trial service without paying Web communication charges.
DoCoMo said this morning they would expand the number of calling plans with which users can bundle flat-rate data. Until now, to get flat-rate data, you also had to select one of two rather pricey FOMA voice plans, such as the Type M Plan for 6,930 yen per month; with flat-rate costing 4,095, this meant that flat-rate data cost about 11,000 yen per month! Starting 1 March, all new FOMA billing plans introduced after 1 November 2005 will be eligible for flat-rate.
DoCoMo have just posted their financial results for the quarter ending 31 December 2005. Operating revenues came in at 3,582.2 bn yen, down 1.7% year-on-year — not bad considering the downward trending ARPU. Operating income was 693.5 bn yen, down 7.7% and income before taxes was 811.2 bn yen, down 32.1%. The lower profits indicate that costs to operate and expand the 3G service continue to remain high. But there are few companies — much less 3G carriers — faced with the ‘problem’ of calculating taxes on 8 billion bucks of profit.
