Japan Market
Japan Market

Japan Market

Shutting Down Prepaid Phones

Kyodo; Vodafone K.K. has begun unilaterally terminating services for prepaid mobile phones that have been used in fraudulent billing and other crimes, company officials said Tuesday. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, plan to submit to the Diet a bill requiring users of prepaid mobile phones to provide personal identification documents at the time of subscription. Still, the measure is unlikely to enter into force until next year.

Cell Phones Aggregate Tourist Info

Cell phones were used in the first experiment of its kind in Japan to transmit and receive sightseeing information in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture. The experiment was conducted by six companies, including an aeronautical map manufacturer and a cell phone company, under the auspices of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry. Given the growing participation in the Wiki-series of content-from-all, content-for-all open-editing projects, mobilers in Japan may just be onto something.

DoCoMo Ending Prepaid Phones

NTT DoCoMo plans to stop accepting new subscribers for its prepaid mobile phone services by the end of March as they are increasingly used in crimes, company officials said Tuesday. Prepaid cellphones under existing contracts can be used for the time being, but NTT DoCoMo plans to discontinue prepaid mobile phone services after a transitional period of two to three years. DoCoMo had 81,000 prepaid cellphone subscribers as of the end of last year, accounting for only 3 percent of overall prepaid phone users.

Vodafone K.K. to Sponsor Urawa Reds Football Team

Vodafone K.K. today announces that it has agreed on a main partner sponsorship agreement with the Urawa Red Diamonds (Urawa Reds) football club in the J.League Division 1 (J1) for a two year period starting with the 2005 season. As part of the main partnership agreement, the Vodafone logo will feature on the front of the Urawa Reds shirts [Photo]. With this new partnership, Vodafone K.K. plans to deliver special Vodafone live! content to customers, develop merchandise featuring the logos of Vodafone and the Urawa Reds and hold events at stadiums and Vodafone shops.

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.

Japan Carriers' December Stats

The December 2004 subscriber stats for Japan’s cellcos came out yesterday and the year-end numbers made two points quite clear: KDDI/au beat DoCoMo for the most net adds in 2004 and and Vodafone KK is still struggling. Looking a little deeper, we note that Big D’s mass-subscriber migration to 3G is starting to kick in with almost 1 million customers coming ‘up to speed’ in December alone; meanwhile Vodafone’s live! wireless Internet service actually saw a net decrease in users last month (by 700) while the two competitors added some 200,000 users to their i-mode and EZweb services.