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Mobile Digital TV: Not (Yet) to a 3G Celly

Today, Portable Reportable looks at the future of cell phone broadcasting and consider what will happen when cell phones will be able to received digital TV broadcasts. NTT DoCoMo and KDDI have quite different plans on how consumers will use digital TV. KDDI appears to be planning to allow the handset to receive digiTV and then use the phone’s 3G data connection as the viewer feedback, marketing, and sales channel — similar to how the FM Keitai works now with analog radio and the preinstalled BREW application.
Full program run-time: 5:01Portable Reportable audio updates are short, 3- to 5-minute news items in MP3 format. You can listen via PC or download and copy to your portable player for tomorrow morning’s commute. — Eds.

KDDI to Slash Fee for 3G Data

KDDI Corp., provider of the “au” mobile phone service, said Wednesday it will slash the fixed-amount charge for data transmission services such as email and Internet access, starting on Aug. 1. The au service has lagged behind the FOMA service of its archrival NTT DoCoMo in net increases of subscribers to third-generation high-speed, large-capacity data transmission services.

NetFront Microbrowser Selected for New NEC Handsets on Hutchinson 3G

ACCESS, a global provider of Internet access technologies, today announced that its NetFront v3.0 microbrowser has been deployed in NEC’s new e616, c616, e313 and c313 handsets for use on Hutchison 3G’s W-CDMA network in Europe and Asia. NEC also selected ACCESS’ AVE(TM) -SSL encryption modules for the handset deployment.

NTT DoCoMo's FeliCa Mobile Wallet Launch

The Mobile Wallet is nearly in our pockets. In what promises to be just the first ripple in a wave of material promoting FeliCa, Takeshi Natsuno, managing director of DoCoMo’s i-mode Planning Department, today took the covers off the first four FeliCa handsets that will be coming into stores this July. Regular Wireless Watchers will know we have been tracking this story over the last 6 months starting with the trial-launch video program Here.

Japan 3G Phones Raising the Bar

Japan 3G Phones Raising the BarToday we look at some of the highlights from NTT DoCoMo’s 1 June 2004 press conference announcing the release of three new 3G cellphone each of which includes new functionality not seen before in the Japan market. This press event is typical for a new handset announcement; all three of Japan’s major cellcos (NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Vodafone) conduct similar sessions for their new model releases. Today’s models all make the first FOMA handsets released back in late 2001 look fatter, clunkier, and more awful than ever. The battery life issues have been solved, and these sleek clam-shell beauties are more sophisticated than ever before.

Full Program Run-time 5:04, also available in Real Player and Quick-Time formats.

KDDI Pumping Up the BREW

On top of rolling out BREW 3.1, KDDI and Big Binary Brother Qualcomm are looking to bring BREW to the boil over the next two years by redeveloping BREW as a de facto OS, according to Nikkei BP today.