Qualcomm and Teleepoch
Enter Into a 3G CDMA Subscriber Unit License Agreement, October
6, 2007
MTN chooses Cambridge Broadband
Networks for multi-service wireless network in Rwanda, October 6,
2007
Brazilian government to
publish 3G bidding rules soon, October 6, 2007
KTF 3G service suffers
from technical problems, October 6, 2007
Argentina’s Personal
lunches 3G service in Rosario, October 6, 2007
Russia has it's first 3G
network, October 6, 2007
AT&T could drop Alcatel-Lucent
as 3G mobile network supplier, October 6, 2007
Enea Extends License Agreement
with ZTE for 3G Handsets, October 2, 2007
LG to unveil premium handsets
in Brazil, October 2, 2007
KTF 3G subscribers doubled
in less than 3 months, October 2, 2007
3G policy in India will
be non-uniform, October 2, 2007
- previous news
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4Get 4G, focus on FOMA
October 16, 2003 - source: Tony Dennis, ITU Telecom World 2003
4G? Not in this decade. “I would recommend that the newspaper community
forget about 4G,” Dr Keiji Tachikawa, president and CEO of NTT DoCoMo,
told journalists in his media address yesterday. Tachikawa was expounding
DoCoMo’s vision of a ubiquitously connected society and was adamant that
4G is only going to be a commercial proposition 10 years hence. He conceded
that voice-based revenues are presently in decline but insisted that DoCoMo
was well placed -- with its FOMA (Freedom Of Mobile multimedia Access)
3G service -- to grow its data revenues from their current level of 20
per cent. DoCoMo signed up its one millionth FOMA customer September 30.
DoCoMo’s president seemed most visibly irritated by questions concerning
the company’s relationship with Microsoft. While politely claiming he
was perfectly prepared to work with Microsoft, Tachikawa criticised Microsoft’s
lack of ‘openness’ -- with particular reference to Passport, a failed
joint m-commerce initiative. He also faced a barrage of questions over
DoCoMo’s relationship with the UK’s Hutchison 3G, in which it holds a
20 per cent stake. Tachikawa “applauded the company for its courage in
forging ahead with a 3G network in Europe while other more prominent carriers
hold back.”
Pressed over Hutchison 3G’s obvious reluctance to launch an i-mode-based
service in the UK, Tachikawa revealed that there were other UK carriers
willing to do so. Indeed he dropped a very strong hint that the company
is less worried about pushing the i-mode brand and far more interesting
in licensing the technology as it has done in Hong Kong with Orange World.
Asked whether DoCoMo intended to change its i-mode pricing structure in
Japan, Dr Tachikawa said the status quo would remain while his company
worked with content providers to develop killer applications and killer
content.
Although the introduction of video-telephony is the cherished dream of
a carrier, people are not really as fond of it as we imagined -- with
a few exceptions,” Tachikawa revealed. He said that lovers and grandparents
with their grandchildren liked video-telephony but the biggest take up
is with business users for videoconferencing. Nonetheless, DoCoMo will
continue to push all forms of video over 3G since research has shown that
humans obtain 30 per cent of their information by audio means while the
remaining 70 per cent is obtained visually. The company will be providing
customers with financial incentives to migrate from 2G to 3G. He pointed
out that with the steepest discount tariffs on FOMA, packets sent over
3G now are one-fifteenth the cost of packets sent via 2G.
Perhaps the most startling claim concerned DoCoMo’s attempts to wire
up absolutely everything now that one in five people globally are connected
to a cellular network. NTT DoCoMo’s aim is to achieve 570 million connections
by 2010. While this figure includes 120 humans plus 50 million mobile
PCs, it also includes 20 million dogs and cats -- ahead of 10 million
refrigerators, motorcycles, yachts and drinks vending machines. That would
give DoCoMo more feline and canine subscribers than Vodafone currently
possesses human subscribers in the UK.
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3G Motorola A920
