NTT to bring mobile Net to Playstation
KPN sees Playstation on Euro iMode phones by summer
By Madeleine Acey, FTMarketWatch
Last Update: 6:00 AM ET Jan 29, 2001
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LONDON (FTMW) - Sony Playstation computer games consoles are
expected to have mobile Internet access by May in Japan and by summer
in Europe via an agreement with Japan's NTT DoCoMo, according to its
Dutch partner KPN Mobile.
Such a development would be seen as a significant move for NTT's
iMode mobile Internet technology in Europe. Sony is also seen as stealing
a march on the rest of the industry by capturing the youth market in
combined gaming and Internet access devices.
KPN Mobile (KPN: news, msgs) announced an eight-way agreement
with Japan's biggest mobile network provider NTT DoCoMo (NTTDF:
news, msgs) consumer electronics giant Sony (SNEJF: news, msgs) ,
AT&T Wireless (T: news, msgs) ,Telecom Italia Mobile (902214: news,
msgs) , Hutchison 3G UK Holdings (864287: news, msgs) , Hutchison
Telephone Company and 20 percent NTT owned Taiwanese telecoms
operator KG Telecom.
KPN said the group had agreed to explore the development of a service
combining iMode and Playstation technologies to bring mobile Internet
access to Playstation consoles and to bring Playstation games to
Internet-enabled phones.
The service would target North America as well as Europe and Asia.
The announcement comes on the back of a partnership between KPN,
Telecom Italia and NTT DoCoMo launched in the middle of January to
develop a mobile portal to compete with the Vodafone (VOD: news,
msgs) Vivendi (012777: news, msgs) (V: news, msgs) owned Vizzavi.
A KPN spokesman said the service was expected to be ready in Japan
over third generation UMTS networks in May and over the 2.5G GPRS
standard in Europe by the summer.
He could not say for sure that it meant Sony was developing a smaller
mobile Playstation console, but he said he thought that was the case.
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