To: S100 who wrote (82820 ) 10/10/2000 1:35:43 AM From: S100 Respond to of 152472 DoCoMo chief seeks collaboration with assorted operators BEN KWOK Tuesday, October 10, 2000 ------------------------------------------------------------ NTT DoCoMo is considering technological collaboration with telecommunications companies on the mainland, rather than investing in them. Chairman Kouji Ohboshi yesterday told a Hong Kong General Chamber of commerce lunch that he was not looking for just one potential partner in the China market. "What I am looking after is technological collaboration and as far as this matter is concerned, I do not want to have an exclusive relationship with a particular operator in China," he said. "I would rather prefer to have an open relationship with all the operators in China." Last week, NTT DoCoMo lost out to Vodafone to become the first foreign telecoms company to take a substantial minority stake in a mainland operator. Vodafone paid US$2.5 billion to take 2 per cent of China Mobile (Hong Kong). Vodafone is the world's largest mobile-phone company in terms of subscribers. NTT DoCoMo is biggest as measured by market capitalisation. "I am in conversation with China Mobile on technical collaboration possibilities but I am not involved in any investment-type of matters," Mr Ohboshi said. However, he did indicate that, if an opportunity arose to invest in China Mobile again next year, the company will consider it. "If they contact us for that possibility, we will do a serious consideration," he said. Mr Ohboshi told guests NTT DoCoMo had not set any upper limit for its investment in China. He said his company also wanted to develop its i-mode or WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access) in the mainland and in Hong Kong. DoCoMo has a 19 per cent stake in Hutchison Telecom, the largest mobile operator in Hong Kong, with 1.6 million subscribers. Meanwhile, the company is actively exploring opportunities to export its i-mode platform to the rest of the world. Apart from buying a direct 15 per cent stake in the Netherlands largest mobile operator, KPN Mobile, DoCoMo also has a 20 per cent stake in Hutchison 3G Europe, which holds a third-generation (3G) mobile licence in Britain, and plans to operate in France and Belgium. DoCoMo, with 12 million subscribers in Japan, will launch 3G services there next year. It will be the first country to begin operating the next generation of services. scmp.com