CDMA
CDMA

CDMA

Our 5th Birthday!

Our 5th Birthday!This week marked a major milestone for WWJ! In one form or another, I’ve been writing this email newsletter for five years — and what a five year term it’s been!

I spent a couple hours last night looking over past WWJ newsletters, and was struck by how much Japan’s mobile scene has changed. In 2001, when I started writing a weekly mobile-focused newsletter for J@pan Inc, i-mode had just celebrated its second birthday, KDDI had yet to roll out CDMA 1X services and the No. 3 competitor in the market was known as “J-Phone.”

Today, DoCoMo is far in the lead with their 3G FOMA service and music and TV are the new hot trends; i-mode itself has become almost dasai (uncool). KDDI have created one of the mightiest and most unified mobile platforms on Earth, with GPS-based blogging, shopping and PC Internet integration drawing huge usage. The company formerly known as J-Phone is about to become the company formerly known as Vodafone as Masayoshi Son attacks 3G mobile with the same successful discount focus with which he attacked NTT and home broadband.

Bonus ‘those were the days’ tidbits via the WWJ Newsletter after the jump!

DoCoMo to Acquire Guam Carriers

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. has just announced that the company will wholly acquire Guam Cellular & Paging, Inc. (Guam Cellular) and Guam Wireless Telephone Company, LLC (Guam Wireless) for the total amount of US$71,800,000. Both companies provide mobile services in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. DoCoMo intends to establish a holding company to acquire 100% of the shares of Guam Cellular. It will then acquire the business of Guam Wireless through Guam Cellular and merge the two companies. DoCoMo will also provide additional funds up to approximately US$6,500,000 to strengthen the newly merged company’s facilities and infrastructure according to their press release.

eMobile Chooses Ericsson Network

eMobile, a new entrant to the Japanese 3G market, has selected Ericsson as the prime supplier of its new W-CDMA/HSDPA network. The agreement involves W-CDMA 1.7GHz radio networks in the most
populated areas of Japan, such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, and a complete nationwide core network, including Ericsson’s service-aware packet core and mobile softswitch solution. Fast roll-out will enable eMobile, a subsidiary company of eAccess, to launch commercial services in March 2007.

Casio G'zOne Headed to Verizon

According to PhoneScoop the FCC finally approved the NX9200 cellphone, the U.S. version of Casio’s popular G’zOne. The handset, which takes both styling and engineering cues from Casio’s G-Shock watch line, sports a Verizon logo in FCC documents. WWJ covered the launch here in May 2005 and said at the time “This could be a design winner should it land on US shores in time for the Christmas shopping rush.” Looks more like “almost in time for spring-break in Florida” instead!

DoCoMo Introduces LG Handset

NTT DoCoMo have just announced they have developed a 3G FOMA series called SIMPURE — a combination of ‘simple’ and ‘pure’ — comprising basic and compact handsets [.jpg] for people who do not require highly sophisticated functions. The series has two models, SIMPURE L, supplied by LG Electronics, and SIMPURE N, supplied by NEC. DoCoMo is positioning this series for use as second handsets for international travel as both models work on W-CDMA, GSM and GPRS networks.

Unseen Perils of Mobile-Phone Use

Opening her daughter’s monthly cell phone bill, the woman’s jaw goes slack with astonishment. Three million yen (approx. $26,000 usd). This is surely a mistake, she thinks. Why, my daughter wasn’t even in Japan for most of that time. “The figure is correct,” confirms a staff member of the carrier company, in a no-nonsense tone. “You are obliged to pay.” This state of affairs, explains Yomiuri Weekly, came about when her daughter’s cell phone was stolen during an overseas trip. Ironically, this particular phone could only be used to make calls in Japan. (Theft like this underscore the increasing amounts of personal data & cash carried on phones in Japan. The point here is that even if the phone itself won’t work overseas, the UIM card will, once transferred to a compatible GSM/WCDMA phone outside Japan — and many Japanese, unfamiliar with GSM-era SIM cards and PIN codes — don’t password-protect their UIM cards. — Eds.)