Two stories: DoCoMo i-mode upgrade casts further 3G doubts (&) China Mobile launches GPRS service, cautious on 3G
DoCoMo i-mode upgrade casts further 3G doubts
By Mike Newlands, in Australia
totaltele.com
16 July 2001
Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo is upgrading its i-mode wireless Internet access service in order to meet growing demand and take the pressure off existing infrastructure.
But the plan to roll out a 2.5G system over the 2G system casts a further shadow over the operator's 3G rollout plan, according to a local newsletter.
DoCoMo's i-mode service has become a victim of its own success with the more than 25 million customers so far signed up putting a major strain on infrastructure.
"The expansion is expected to make connecting trouble-free, even if the number of subscribers increases to 50 million," a DoCoMo official said.
At present each cellular base station can handle six calls or i-mode sessions at a time, and capacity will be increased to 12 in an engineering exercise that Japan Inc's Wireless Watch comments "can't be cheap."
But the newsletter speculates that the upgrade means DoCoMo intends to keep its underlying 2G system, which the 2.5G i-mode runs on top of, for the foreseeable future "casting even more of a shadow on the third quarter rollout of 3G".
Saying "we're clearly going to have a 2G/3G dual environment for some time," the newsletter comments the lesson for other operators is packet-switched data services provided by existing 2G TDMA and GSM systems can be huge money makers. "Unlike DoCoMo, don't rush to build 3G just yet," it said.
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, DoCoMo president Keiji Tachikawa said the planned October commercial launch of 3G services, following a small trial run which started in late May, will be on schedule. "In the trial we learned that the problems were less severe than we had anticipated. In October, we think we will be able to begin full service," he said.
Tachikawa also said the core area of DoCoMo's 3G development strategy is Asia, and the company is forging partnerships with telcos that have been awarded 3G operating licenses in their own markets and which will adopt the WCDMA standard.
DoCoMo already has strategic stakes in Hutchison Telecom, Hong Kong's top service provider, and Taiwan Cellular, and is angling to buy a stake in Korean mobile market leader SK Telecom. "We are considering strong partner candidates in Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. China is a gigantic and attractive market, but it's still too early to see what will develop there," Tachikawa said.
Despite the large numbers of customers who have signed up for i-mode and competing wireless Internet services in the past two years, growth in the Japanese mobile subscriber base remains strong.
Figures released by the Telecommunications Carriers Association show a 1.1% growth in subscribers during June, bringing the total to 63.39 million. DoCoMo was slightly off the pace with a 1% growth rate to 37.32 million subscribers, giving it a 58.9% market share.
KDDI Corp. fared worse with a 0.85% increase to 15.55 million subscribers and a 24.53% share while third-ranked Japan Telecom was the fastest growing at 1.9% to give it 10.52 million customers and a 16.59% market share.
In the Internet-enabled mobile phone market, there were 40.38 million subscribers in June, up 4.4% from May. DoCoMo had a 61.89% share of this market sector compared to 19.59% for KDDI and 18.52% for Japan Telecom.
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China Mobile launches GPRS service, cautious on 3G
By Simon Marshall, Total Telecom
totaltele.com
16 July 2001
China Mobile began its planned GPRS (2.5G) commercial trial Monday in 25 cities in 16 Chinese provinces, in a move that may intensify competition with its nearest rival, China Unicom.
According to the People's Daily newspaper, China Mobile will look to launch full commercial service in two months' time, while Unicom will launch CDMA service in October, although it had been planning an early 2002 launch.
Alternative operator China Unicom has seen its mobile market share grow from a mere 3% in 1998 to 24% this year. The company has also been reporting subscriber increases as it charges 10% to 20% less than state-owned China Mobile, which has around 80 million subscribers.
Lu Xiangdong, China Mobile's vice president, told the newspaper the company plans to focus on the data services that 2.5G will allow, and expects data revenue to eclipse voice as the top profit maker.
"The coming four years will still be the world of 2.5G," he said, "China Mobile will be cautious about a rapid transfer to 3G." He added that he thought the current market was not "appropriate" for 3G services.
China Mobile selected 2,900 subscribers aged between 25 and 45 to take part in the GPRS trial.
Separately, China Unicom announced Monday it had upgraded its fixed line VoIP billing to support 80 million prepaid calling and bank cards using a system from Israel's Mind CTI. Unicom's current system supports only 20 million prepaid subscribers.
"At a time when the telecommunications industry in China is developing aggressively, China Unicom took advantage of new technology and advanced solutions to seize the opportunity to expand our voice network and enhance the services we offer," said Unicom's vice president Liu Yunjie. |
