Wireless News
Wireless News

Wireless News

Japan's Bullet Trains to Get Wi-Fi

Passengers on the famous Japanese Shinkansen “bullet trains” will be able to surf the Internet while traveling at 300 kilometers per hour, thanks to a new service planned by the railway operator. But there’s going to be quite a wait until the first wireless LAN-equipped trains arrive at the platform. Central Japan Railway (JR Tokai), which operates the Shinkansen service between Tokyo and the western Japanese city of Osaka, said it plans to offer wireless Internet service throughout all cars of its new N700-series trains in early 2009.

Brazil Adopts Japan Digital TV Standard

Brazil has selected a HD digital television system based on a Japanese standard for its more than 120 million television viewers, instead of the standards used in Europe and the United States. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday signed a decree authorizing the use of the Japanese standard in a ceremony attended by Japanese Communications Minister, Heizo Takenaka. The new system is expected be operational within seven years and the transition to digital television from the current analog model will occur over 10 years, the presidential press office said in a statement.

Sanyo Nokia Deal Called Off

Sanyo Electric has given up potentially lucrative plans announced in February to tie up on mobile handsets with Finnish giant Nokia as the firms had failed to reach a compromise. “The plan of setting up a joint venture with Nokia in CDMA mobile handsets is over, as both sides saw difficulty making concessions in sharing patent rights and other company assets,” Sanyo Electric spokesman Akihiro Oiwa said Thursday. The plan was one pillar of Sanyo’s restructuring efforts.

Ministry Ponders Mobile Network Access

The Ministry of Communications is studying making it mandatory for telecommunications service providers to allow other telecom firms access to their wireless communications networks in the year to March 2008, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported without citing sources. With the move, the ministry aims to bring more competition to a market that is dominated by NTT DoCoMo Inc, KDDI Corp and the Softbank Corp group, the business daily said.

Hitachi to Boost RFID Business

Hitachi Ltd., Japan’s largest electronics conglomerate, said on Wednesday it plans to launch full-scale wireless tag operations, targeting a 16 percent share of the $3.5 billion domestic market in the next four years. Hitachi, which first developed an IC tag in 2001, has forecast 9.7 trillion yen in consolidated sales in the year to March 2007.

DoCoMo Seeking 3G Partner in China

NTT DoCoMo may seek partners in China after the Chinese government issues licenses for high-speed networks to expand in the world’s biggest mobile phone market. One of the standards, called W- CDMA, is the same as the platform adopted by DoCoMo in Japan. “We have to see what kind of technology the operators will use,” Takeshi Natsuno, senior vice president of multimedia services at Tokyo-based DoCoMo, said in an interview broadcast today. “After that, we can decide what kind of strategic alliance we’re going to make.”