J-Phone's New Wireless Service Starts Slow With 1,200 Users
Friday January 10, 4:53 am ET
TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- Japan Telecom Holdings Co.'s (J.JTC or 9434) J-Phone unit said Friday its newest mobile phone service, called "Vodafone Global Standard," attracted 1,200 subscribers in December, indicating a relatively slow start.
"This is a soft launch. We are gradually going to increase sales channels and volume" of cellular phone handsets for the new service, said a J-Phone spokesman.
Launched Dec. 20, J-Phone's VGS service offers third-generation wireless services in Japan and international roaming services abroad and is aiming for one million subscribers by the end of March 2004.
In the Dec. 20-31 period, J-Phone marketed two VGS-type cellphone handset models, made by Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - News) and NEC Corp. (NIPNY or 6701), the spokesman said.
Motorola's handset, a GSM (global system for mobile) handset, can only be used outside of Japan. NEC's handset, a dual-mode one, can be used on J-Phone's W- CDMA (wideband code division multiple access) network in Japan and on GSM networks in many other countries.
J-Phone plans to sell a dual-mode handset made by Nokia Corp. and a Japan-use-only W-CDMA handset made by Sanyo Electric Co. (SANYY or 6764) in the near future.
In December, J-Phone added 160,300 subscribers to its current-generation and VGS services, for a total of 13.323 million subscribers.
Japan's third-largest mobile phone operator also added 214,800 subscribers to its "J-Sky" mobile Internet service, bringing its "J-Sky" subscriber base to 11.546 million.
Vodafone Group Plc of the U.K. holds a 66.7% stake in Japan Telecom Holdings.
-By Ron Harui, Dow Jones Newswires; 813-5255-2929; ron.harui@dowjones.com
biz.yahoo.com
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MOT's handset that's on sale - and included in 1.2K "3G" user count - is GSM only!
And as has been noted on 3G Newsroom boards, it certainly sounds like dual-modes are GSM - not GPRS.
They're having all of the handoff problems - and it's with vanilla GSM?
On top of VOD's 3000 FOMA sub adds - it's been a heady month! At this pace, DoCoMo may hit 170K (not 300+K) by March.
How is Hutchison's LI sleeping?
LOL! |
