Word: docomo
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...easier. Many Japanese convenience stores are fitted with terminals that function as combination ATMs and online shopping kiosks, offering CDs, concert tickets and hotel reservations. The next step, say industry experts, is to link conventional vending machines with Japan's ubiquitous cellular telephones. In March, Japanese telecommunications giant NTT DoCoMo announced that it is teaming up with Coca-Cola Japan and Itochu Corp. to test a system that will link i-mode, the company's Net phone service, with vending machines, allowing users to pay for drinks by pressing a few buttons on their handsets...
...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...
...before 3G becomes a serious consumer business. "There's already an existing good alternative: second generation voice plus sms text messaging," Moroney observes. Then there's so-called 2.5G, which transmits data in a similar fashion to UMTS, but with more limited bandwidth. The innovative Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo, meanwhile, has designs on importing its own version of next-generation wireless to Europe. The really fun stuff like video streaming might come first through something called a wireless LAN, a network available in designated areas like cafés and hotels. Just think of a coffee shop...
...more important obstacle was money. Telecommunications is still a tightly regulated industry in Japan. Local phone calls are expensive and charged by the minute. Money, in fact, is one of the reasons the Japanese send e-mail on i-mode instead of simply calling their friends. DoCoMo charges i-mode users according to the amount of data they receive or send, not the amount of time they are online. One message with 50 characters costs 1 yen. A 1-min. phone call? Twenty...