Japan Telecom Holdings owned two-thirds by Britain’s Vodafone Group said on Tuesday that half-year operating profit fell 12 percent due to the hefty cost of building up its 3G network. Its wireless unit, Vodafone KK, known as J-Phone until September, scrambled to expand the area coverage of its high-speed 3G network this year in a bid to catch up with NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp.
Vodafone is expected to announce a huge increase in dividend payments when it unveils half-year profits on Tuesday. Analysts believe that new chief executive Arun Sarin will increase dividends by as much as 30% a share for the current financial year. Sarin, who took over from Sir Christopher Gent after the group’s annual meeting in July, is also expected to give further details on the launch of Vodafone’s 3G mobile service.
Today Enfour Group announced launch date for GlobalNavi – their new roaming content on Vodafone Global Standard (VGS) – Vodafone K.K.’s 3GPP-based, high-speed W-CDMA network. This new mobile service, called GlobalNavi, aggregates a full suite of data and voice services catering for the needs of international travellers in their native language. This service takes full advantage of the first truely global data roaming service provided by VGS.
In September, a group of IT professionals visited Japan to roll up their sleeves and find out who are pushing what enterprise applications here. With FeliCa debuting in trial form a few weeks from now, we were interested in hearing their views about Japan’s ready-built business apps. infrastructure. You may be surprised by their findings. Independent consultant (and WWJ subscriber) Donal O’Shea was part of the group that included representatives of a major French airline, an Australian steel company and a UK-based package delivery company, together with Douglas Neal and Piet Opperman of CSC Research Services and Sebastien Bacholet of Cigref. They met with Qualcomm, HP, IBM, NTT DoCoMo, Alcatel/Fujitsu, Telecom France, Nissan, and Hitachi, and toured the Yokohama Reasearch Park. Wow, Big Big Itinerary… In a nutshell, concludes O’Shea, “carriers have never understood the enterprise…”
Vodafone K.K. Tokyo, announced today that on December 1 it will commence nationwide sales of the V801SA by Sanyo, a new 3G handset compatible with Vodafone Global Standard (VGS) for use not only in Japan but abroad as well. With the launch of the V801SA, Vodafone K.K. will simultaneously offer new Vodafone live! mobile internet services exclusively for VGS. The V801SA Handset Offers Sha-mail and Movie Sha-mail Access Overseas 3G Vodafone live! to launch with rich and high-speed W-CDMA contents.
Vodafone K.K. announced today that from December 1 it will offer “Vodafone Happy Packet”, a new discount service for packet data communications that makes Vodafone live! for PDC (2.5G) customers even easier to use with savings of up to 80%. Two types of Vodafone Happy Packet discounts will be available—Super (fixed monthly charge of 2,950 yen and 80% off) and Regular (fixed monthly charge of 1,200 yen and approximately 66% off). In addition, all of the fixed monthly charge can be used as a free charge allowance towards packet communications like Super Mail, web browsing, and Sky Mail (SMS) and voice communications as well. At a later date, Vodafone K.K. plans to separately announce details on a packet data communications discount for its Vodafone Global Standard 3G service.
