Word: docomo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...futures while hanging from Mount Rushmore. Third-generation mobile telecommunications, or 3G, was going to change life as we know it, starting this month in Japan. Well, it looks like we're safe, for a while at least, from video conferences with the boss while on the privy. NTT DoCoMo, the undisputed hare in the race to bring 3G to market, announced last week that its service wasn't ready, and postponed the launch until October, a move that led to a 5% drop in the company's stock...
...call their partners on the way home from work to nag them to pick up the dry cleaning. (It succeeded zero-generation: yelling real loud.) That begat 2G, which most of us use, though rarely to its full potential, which includes text messaging and sending smiley faces to classmates. (DoCoMo became a renewed symbol of Japanese tech prowess by popularizing those features, especially with the young, through its i-mode service.) 3G is an exponential jump, allowing one to do pretty much anything a PC can, anywhere. Its hype was such that companies spent fortunes to win 3G licenses around...
...problem, according to a shamefaced DoCoMo, is that the software for the system is full of bugs. Worse: no one really knows whether consumers even want 3G. An intermediate system, 2.5G, is in service in four countries, offering speedy, "always on" Net connections. But few manufacturers make souped-up handsets and the networks are idle?while the world continues to simply talk on their cell phones. Will 3G be greeted with a similar yawn? DoCoMo is putting on a brave face, insisting it will be the first 3G provider on the planet. Its big competitor these days: the Isle...
...less than it does in the U.S. Another reason for the superiority of European and Japanese mobile telephony is better transmission standards. The Europe-wide GSM standard has long allowed a range of uses that are only just becoming widely available in the U.S.; the Japanese firm NTT DoCoMo, with its i-mode technology, has made mobile Internet access available to millions. But there's more to it than that...
Though telecom companies in Europe and Asia have paid dearly for 3G licenses, the whole mobile revolution looks further off than once seemed likely. The Financial Times recently reported that only two of the 11 manufacturers with whom NTT DoCoMo had signed contracts for 3G handsets would be ready for a scheduled launch of the service in May. Meanwhile, manufacturers like Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens are scaling back their projections for today's mobile phones, never mind tomorrow's; Ericsson's shares tumbled to a 17-month low after the company said that it expected handset sales to be considerably...