DoCoMo Looking for Cingular Deal?

September 23, 2004 - source: BWCS

According to press reports in Japan, NTT DoCoMo is locked in talks with US mobile giant Cingular aimed at unifying the pair's 3G mobile phone services. Some analysts believe that the move has been on the cards since February of this year, when Cingular agreed to pay just over US$41 billion to take control of AT&T Wireless in which DoCoMo owns a 16% stake.

If the report in the Japanese Nihon Keizai business paper can be believed, the two companies are keen to achieve an understanding which would lead to technology sharing in terms of handset software and i-mode. In turn this will help drive down phone prices and allow customers to use the same handsets in Japan and the US. Between them the two operators command a shared subscriber base of 90 million mobile users.

As news of the possible alliance emerged this morning, members of the UMTS Forum were busy banging their own drum in Sydney, Australia. Chairman of the Forum, Jean-Pierre Bienaimé, claimed that there are now over 10 million 3G UMTS customers around the world. Citing an upswing in customer numbers in the first two quarters of this year, a rash of new network builds and an influx of new 3G handsets, the chairman managed to paint a rosier picture than usual for the Forum's members. All the same the assembled UMTS enthusiasts will have to temper their excitement with the knowledge that in August of this year, the rival CDMA2000 technology claimed 112 million users worldwide.