AT&T Wireless today announced agreements with Nortel Networks and Ericsson to deploy what is expected to be the first commercial W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple band Access) wireless network in North America. The W-CDMA network can support high speed VPN access, audio and video applications, as well as advanced location-based and m-Commerce features.
If any of you begin to note a slightly limey tone to future Viewpoints, it’s because the WWJ team has a new member, moi – Paul Kallender, as Tokyo correspondent. Take a look at my my bio. below and you will see that I am fully capable of deploying my creative weapons of article construction well within 45 minutes! I’ll be filing weekly with my take on the trends animating Japan’s mobile biz, as well as offering insight you can’t get from our competitors -most of whom either don’t live in Japan or are not actually independent journalists. I can’t follow in ex-editor-in-chief Daniel Scuka’s footsteps (partly because he’s in Germany and I’m in Japan), but I do hope you’ll bear with meas I attempt in my own way to “rip the faceplate” off Japan’s wireless industry. Given my Aikido background, I will be doing my best to at least throw some of the PR pap journalists have to rewrite into the digital dustbin of history. In short, come to WWJ for the stuff you can’t get elsewhere.
NTT DoCoMo and its eight regional subsidiaries today announced that they will begin marketing the 3G N2102V videophone from July 18, 2003. The smallest in the FOMA series, the new model boasts a compact and lightweight (109g) design that is on a par with 2G handsets. It also features an enhanced mail function and longer battery life. The N2102V’s enhanced Speed photo mail function allows users to simultaneously call and send mail with attached photos taken either on-the-spot or previously saved. When enabled, the function automatically displays the e-mail address link of the person being called.
Leveraging on the success of NEC Corporation and Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) in building Hutchison’s 3G networks in the UK and Italy, Hutchison 3G HK Limited (Hutchison 3G HK) has awarded a contract to NEC and Siemens mobile for the supply of the radio network of its third generation (3G) WCDMA-based network. Hutchison 3G HK targets to launch its 3 service in August 2003.
Campaigns targeting MobileNet consumers must go beyond considerations of location and time focusing on broader user context in order to be effective, according to a study released today by researchers at the International University of Japan. Based on the results of 14,000 mobile user responses nationwide, the researchers have created an approach that includes user context for developing and deploying MobileNet solutions. Although physical location and time of day at which users access the MobileNet is important and correlated to some extent with user content choice, the results suggest that such factors provide no true foundation upon which to build effective marketing campaigns or profitable business models.
NEC Corp. has demonstrated a third-generation cell phone that it claims is the first to incorporate a digital-TV tuner. NEC plans to demonstrate the TV cell phone at Telecom World 2003, the International Telecommunication Union event to be held Oct. 12-18 in Geneva, Switzerland.
