Carriers
Carriers

Carriers

Softbank Offers to Buy Tu-Ka Mobile

Softbank Corp. has offered to acquire the three Tu-Ka mobile operators from KDDI Corp. for more than 200 bn yen. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun said on Saturday that the three are Tu-Ka Cellular Tokyo Inc., Tu-Ka Cellular Tokai Inc. and Tu-Ka Phone Kansai Inc.

Ed’s Note: The Tu-Kas have a total of 3.5 million customers and an established PDC 2G network; this offer might prove to be a more effective mobile-market entry plan for Softbank than going through the courts for 3G spectrum. Watch to see how KDDI reacts.

DoCoMo Plans New Offices in APAC

NTT DoCoMo has announced the company will establish offices in Shanghai and Singapore in January 2005. The company said it aims to “enhance its information-gathering capabilities, as well as raise its profile and strengthen relationships with government officials and corporate managers, in these two important markets.” The carrier also stated that, “Yoshimune Ishii will head the Shanghai office and Haruki Yamashita will head the Singapore office, both of which will have about four employees.”

eAccess Announces 3G Trials

Broadband Internet provider eAccess announced at a press conference here Thursday that it will start W-CDMA experiments in late January in the 1.7-GHz spectrum by partnering with Fujitsu. eAccess President Sachio Senmoto appeared confident that Japan’s telecoms ministry will approve the company’s application to offer mobile services starting in 2006. The trials include performance testing of W-CDMA base stations and a speed evaluation of next-gen HSDPA (so-called Super 3G).

DoCoMo Releases N506is Handset

Yesterday, NTT DoCoMo announced the 2G N506iS by NEC [.jpg], which the company says is the world’s first mobile phone featuring a flat-panel display that also functions as a speaker. The flat-panel speaker emits sound by sending vibrations throughout the entire display panel. A user can hear the person on the other end by placing an ear anywhere on the panel. DoCoMo says that this makes audiovisual content more vivid than conventional handsets, whose speakers are located on the side of the display.

BREW Runs Robot via Bluetooth

KDDI started New Year with a bang yesterday, with three seperate press releases; they announced over 1 million full-song downloads (already!) and something about OTA (over-the-air) updates which we can’t quite make out. However the one about their new BREW-based, Bluetooth-controlled robot [ .jpg ] looked pretty interesting. It seems that Robot Labs has a 29-cm tall, 2-legged beast that weighs in at about 950 grams. Available in early February for about 198,000 yen, it [ .pdf ] has servo motors and gyro sensors — so it’s got to be cool — and will respond to various movement commands (“kick,” “punch”) issued from the cell-phone appli via bluetooth.. Wow!

Hitachi Wins 3G Order from KDDI

Hitachi said it has won a contract worth over US $800 mn from KDDI Corp. for 3G wireless communications equipment. “We can’t give you specific figures, but the size of the contract exceeds the US$800 mn order KDDI awarded to South Korea’s Samsung Electronics yesterday,” said Hitachi spokeswoman Naoko Okada.