Willcom Inc., Japan’s largest personal handy-phone system (PHS) company, said Tuesday it will introduce a flat rate for voice communication starting 1 May, becoming the first domestic wireless carrier to provide such service. It said the service will allow users to call fellow Willcom PHS users for unlimited minutes for 2,900 yen per month. Willcom, formerly DDI Pocket Inc., was bought out from KDDI Corp. by the U.S. investment firm Carlyle Group.
KDDI have just announced that as of 7 April they will have a total of 36 channels available on the WIN platform’s “EZ Channel” video content service. New additions include pro baseball, language lessons and an extreme sports program, X Games, from Walt Disney Japan. Customers can start signing up next week to see introduction program previews and, we guess, finally buy into a flat-rate packet data plan (if they haven’t already).
Recognizing that spam e-mail is a serious problem that requires a concerted, industry-wide effort to resolve, Internet Initiative Japan Inc., KDDI Corporation, NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Panasonic Network Services, Inc., Plala Networks Inc., and Vodafone K.K. today announced that Japan’s major Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile telecommunication carriers have jointly established the Japan E-mail Anti-Abuse Group (JEAG) to examine and implement technological countermeasures against E-mail abuse.
Vodafone KK said today the company would implement measures to prevent the display of disguised incoming call numbers. For calls that originate on other networks and terminate on Vodafone KK handsets, the company will identify calls suspected of stemming from disguised call number displays, and not display them to the receiver based on meeting predefined conditions. The system will start operation today and is due to be completed nationwide by 22 March.
Two vendors, one American and the other Japanese, said they have plans to deploy a citywide WiMAX wireless broadband network in Tokyo. U.S. vendor Airspan and Japanese communications operator Yozan said they will start trials for the network in the second quarter of this year. They said that commercial rollout will begin in the fourth quarter, with a fuller-scale launch in December. Japanese telecom operator NTT said earlier in the week that it plans to deploy metro-scale Wi-Fi networks in a number of locations.
Vodafone K.K. today announces that, as part of its new 3G lineup, it plans to offer the Vodafone 902T handset by Toshiba in late April. The Vodafone 902T features an Active Turn Style design, which allows the display to swivel 180 degrees clockwise while the handset is open, so customers can enjoy the most suitable style when taking pictures or making video calls. Using a concept called Switch to Fun!, the Vodafone 902T’s design was conceived to enable customers to fully enjoy 3G services. The Vodafone 902T is a high-end model in the Vodafone 902/802/702 series that takes full advantage of Vodafone 3G services, with features that include an auto focus 1.92 megapixel camera, a 2.4-inch QVGA screen, twin stereo speakers and Bluetooth support.
