Yozan Inc. has announced that it will terminate most of its PHS (personal handy-phone system) services in Japan at the end of November and make the shift to its new wireless broadband services starting in December. Yozan aquired the PHS sysytem from Tokyo Electric in August 2002 and has since watched customers migrate to new, faster 3G services. See the company’s Japanese press release, in .PDF format, here.
ITX E-Globaledge Corporation, NTT DoCoMo, Sharp Corporation and Waseda University have jointly developed IrSimple*1, a high-speed wireless communications protocol using infrared. IrDA*2 (Infrared Data Association), an industry organization that develops and standardizes specifications for infrared communications, has decided to formally adopt the protocol as its standard. IrSimple achieves faster data transmission speeds (at least 4 to 10 times faster than at present) by improving the efficiency of the current infrared IrDA protocol embedded in many mobile devices such as mobile phones. In addition, the IrSimple protocol also maintains backward compatibility with the existing IrDA protocols.
Rumours are circulating that NTT DoCoMo will introduce a Push-to-Talk (PTT) voice service by mid-October. Several Japanese trade journals have reported the as-yet-unconfirmed plans, saying that DoCoMo plans to market a cellular phone equipped with a chip made by US Qualcomm in October. With three new carriers set to enter the domestic market in 2006, the dominant telco is said to be considering how to defend its market share by offering new services and incentives. Opinions suggest the company will respond to the popular, though as yet still not widely used, flat-rate voice services launched by Willcom in May this year and the family free-call trial running on Vodafone from July through the end of October.
According to this statement [in Japanese] NTT DoCoMo lost customer data records for 48,000 people in the Kanto region. The missing hard-disc, reported to police June 27, had client information such as “Contractor Name” and “Phone Number” however did not contain “Customers Address”, “Credit Card Number” or “Password Details” the company said.
Willcom Inc. has decided to bid for use of the 2GHz band that the Communications Ministry plans to offer to one 3G cellular phone service company this year, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun learned Monday. If approval is granted, Willcom plans to launch next-generation PHS service that will realize a data speed of 20-30 megabits per second — about 100 times as fast as current PHS services and equal to that of ASDL.
DoCoMo’s hybrid 3G-PDA M1000 handset is off the showroom floor and finally on the street. WWJ was at the launch event and we’ve put together a quick video program showing just what sort of hoops this smartphone jumps through. Previewed at an April 15 press conference, the tri-band business-use handset from Motorola juggles W-CDMA, GSM and GPRS for global roaming, opens Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs as well as PDF files, and allows multiple email functions including POP and IMAP email. Internet access channels through the Opera 7.5 browser. DoCoMo took the (daring) step of dropping i-mode capability for the M1000 in favor of global compatibility. More PDA than phone, all navigation is through the bright, 2.9-inch touch screen.
