Firms still not ready to compete with DoCoMo

date: January 20, 2002

Japan's No. 2 and 3 mobile firms are gearing up to challenge NTT DoCoMo Inc's lead in advanced 3G services this year, but real competition won't start until 2003, industry players say.

Japan’s No.2 and 3 mobile firms are planning to challenge NTT DoCoMo lead in 3G services this year but competition will not be expected until 2003. Tetsuzo Matsumoto, president of the Japanese unit of Qualcomm Inc, said, “The real battle for 3G will be next year”. Qualcomm currently holds the relevant patents for the technology that enables fast access of the Internet and delivery of video to 3G phones. KDDI, the No. 2 wireless unit in Japan, will upgrade their network to the cdma2000 1X standard, which is capable of transmission rivaling DoCoMo’s WCDMA 3G service.

Number 3 J-Phone, owned by Japan Telecom and its parent Vodafone Group, said it hopes to start 3G services on June 30. It will use the W-CDMA standard.

Last week DoCoMo said it may not reach its goal of 150,000 3G subscribers by the end of March and fearing the amount of enthusiasm for 3G may not be as high as intended. It currently has only about 30,000 or 40,000 subscribers now. DoCoMo Senior Executive Vice President Yoshinori Uda said they are confident that it would accumulate the 1.5 million 3G subscribes it expects in the business year starting from April 1. Their main focus would be on getting their initial services off the ground.

J-Phone President Darryl Green told reporters last week that Japan will be the first place in the entire Vodafone group to launch 3G.

Operators must have the applications as well as the speed. The applications are attractions of the 3G technology.

Qualcomm is pushing the cdma200 standard that it developed and is said to be a more cost efficient service. But DoCoMo and Vodafone will use the W-CDMA, which Qualcomm's Matsumoto said would be more costly to deploy. He also added "For the current year, 3G won't exist in an acceptable form, …. The applications aren’t there yet."

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