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Article: Lessons from Japan: NTT DoCoMo has wisely adopted a step-by-step approach to service provisioning. (3G strategies).
- Article from:
- Telecommunications (International Edition)
- Article date:
- February 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Horizon House Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It's what you're used to but only a lot faster. OK, that might be a simplified version of the FOMA sales pitch on the Tokyo high street but it's not far off the mark.
FOMA, which stands for 'Freedom of Multimedia Access', is the '3G' service launched by NTT DoCoMo in October 2001. Incidentally, the use of inverted commas is deliberate. NTT DoCoMo does not define FOMA in technological terms but by what it can do. The Tokyo salesperson, rather than mention 3G, will say that FOMA can deliver i-mode content and applications up to forty times faster (384Kbps) than the old 9.6Kbps PDC handsets.
And if would-be FOMA customers ask about how the billing system ...