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To: mmeggs who wrote (22107)	1/28/1999 3:09:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 152472

This Is Very Interesting > Semiconductors Systems & Software Design Technology People NTT plans wireless Internet service for cell phones By Yoshiko Hara EE Times (01/28/99, 3:03 p.m. EDT) TOKYO — NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. (NTT Docomo), the largest cellular/PHS phone carrier in Japan, will start a wireless Internet-access service — called "i-mode" — next month that uses NTT's cellular phones. In so doing, NTT Docomo has abandoned the approach involving the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) proposed by Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Unwired Planet Inc. "We've joined the WAP Forum, but there's no site that is written in the Wireless Markup Language [that is to be used for WAP]," said Keiichi Enoki, general manager of Gateway Department of NTT Docomo. "We decided to use HTML for the contents of the i-mode service. All home pages in the world are written in HTML and to utilize the existing contents is important." As wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) is drawing near, "we could not wait for WAP," said Takeshi Natsuno, media director of Docomo Gateway Business Department. By combining current 9,600 bits/second Personal Digital Cellular (PDC) (the Japanese cellular-phone format), packet communication and HTML browser, "NTT Docomo has chosen a completely practical solution," he said. "In 2001, W-CDMA service will begin and the i-mode service will still be compatible because the Extensible Markup Language for W-CDMA will support HTML." Taking advantage of the 21 million subscribers that NTT Docomo holds in Japan, the company expects 10 million subscriptions for the service in three years. The service is an additional packet communication network built on Docomo's PDC network. The service consists of four components: a cellular phone capable of voice and packet communication and with a text browser installed, a packet network, i-mode server and information providers. A cellular phone with i-mode capability will enable voice communications and text message exchange as an existing cellular phone, plus e-mail and Web access. The Internet service of i-mode is basically in text mode and will use a subset of HTML. If an existing home page has text mode, the i-mode cellular can access it. NTT Docomo intends to open the text browser to information providers. The company plans to charge about 27 cents per one 128-byte packet of data in addition to a fixed monthly charge of about $2.60. "I-mode passes packet at only 9,600 bits/s. But data is in text in principle, which is 500 bytes to at most 1 kbyte, so the speed is fast enough," said Enoki. NTT Docomo will introduce three models of i-mode cellular phones, supplied by NEC, Fujitsu and Mitsubishi. NEC's terminal has a larger LCD, and it can display eight Japanese characters (2-byte characters) in six lines. At present, the phone unit is slightly larger and heavy compared with the front-edge cellular phones. But Enoki said, "As the LC display is larger, the terminal becomes heavy. But in several model changes, technology will evolve to enable the same light and small terminal."