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Technology Stocks : NTT DoCoMo Inc. (DCM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quick_thinking who wrote (12)	3/4/2004 12:48:01 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 55

Flat Fee, All You Can Eat Packet Data ... quick_thinking, << Flat fee FOMA 3G data ... Sooner or later (in my experience, in about 3-4 years) this trend will also move to Europe and US. >> A good move. A necessarry move with KDDI pioneering it in Japan. A couple of comments on this as it relates to the US where it not only has already moved, but where it started. Sprint PCS pioneered flat rate all you can eat wireless packet data here in the USA, shortly after the introduction of 1xRTT Vision services. From the inception the modestly priced plan ($15/mo adder) was intended for data delivered to the handset not data delivered to a laptop or PDA using phone as modem (a violation of TOU) but initially PCS overlooked that TOU restriction. They are starting to crack down on that and now are evidently provisioning handsets differently than they did originally to prevent the phone as modem trick. Sprint has a slightly higher flat rate for all you can eat on their converged MS smartphones ($25/mo), considerably lower than the $80 unlimited plan they offer for laptop, which is the same rate that Verizon Wireless charges for unlimited 1xRTT or 1xEV-DO data, or that AT&T Wireless charges for unlimited EDGE data. Verizon also offers a $40/mo unlimited rate for smartphones like the Thera and the Kyocera 7135. I'm guessing they'll keep this when the first DO handsets arrive here from Taiwan (HTC) and Korea LGE). For at least 6 months, T-Mobile USA, has offered flat rate all you can eat GPRS wireless data, and has not yet placed a restriction on the use of the phone as modem. The rate for data cards without a voice account is $29.99/mo unlimited and I believe it is $19.99/mo for a phone adder onto a voice account. T-Mobile is currently the loss leader here with the lowest flat rate, and I expect that rate will not change when they upgrade GPRS to EGPRS this year. We are kind of flat rate fanatics, here. When GUI browsers for PCs came into being and national and regional ISPs emerged (late 1995/early 1996) replacing on line service providers like AOL and CompuServe the de facto all you can eat standard for what people were willing to pay for dial service over copper was set at $19.95 per month unlimited. Today we are settling in at around $30-$40 per month for DSL or cable broadband, I pay Comcast $40/month for 3 Mbps down and 384 Kbps up. Verizon charges $30/month for their aDSL offering bundled with landline and wireless. We are also big into bundles, and AT&T Wireless set the early standard here when they introduced tiered national digital one-rate pricing eliminating roaming and long distance charges, and since then all carriers have picked up on (virtually) unlimited off peak and weekend calling and intra carrier mobile to mobile calling as part of the tiered bundle. Cingular allows rolling unused minutes month to month and that's quite popular. We still however have not been able to do a successful implementation of CPP. One of the things that the mobile wireless carriers or carriers that have a mobile wireless subsidiary are attempting to avoid is creating simply a fat pipe in already constrained spectrum reserved for mobile wireless telephony where the killer app is still voice. Unfortunately the underlying services that have appeal and can be charged additional for are slow to materialize here. We are something of a backwater compared to Japan or Korea in that regard. << One big move in this direction are the wallet-phone services to be introduced soon >> Cool move. Koreans doing it too. Visa, MC, and AMEX, working to get that off the dime here in their local region, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm most appreciative of your perspective on Japan, and thanks for starting this thread. I might add that yesterday Rich Temlpeton of TI spoke at the Morgan Stanley Investor conference, and he gave a big plug to what the Japanese were doing with semiconductors for consumer electronics (not limited to cellphones). That of course was also a plug for TI's OMAP application processors which are used in at least 3 of the new FOMA 900i series, evidently and Japanese made some cameras, and other goods. Best, - Eric -