This is a little late but interesting nonetheless. I read on DoCoMo’s official site about an experiment DoCoMo is doing with 3G that entails a 300MBps speed internet line. Woot! I think that’s super fast, if not, super fast :)

TOKYO, JAPAN, July 13, 2007 — NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced today that this month it began testing an experimental Super 3G system for mobile communications. With this experiment, DoCoMo will seek to achieve a downlink transmission rate of 300Mbps over a high-speed wireless network.

Super 3G features low-latency data transmission and improved spectrum efficiency. It is a highly advanced version of High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), which have been evolved from W-CDMA packet transmission technologies standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The 3GPP, a telecommunications standards organization, is currently discussing standardization of Super 3G under the name Long Term Evolution (LTE).

DoCoMo will begin with an indoor experiment to test transmission speed using one transmitting and one receiving antenna. The company will then expand the experiment to examine downlink transmission by employing up to four Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antennas for both the base station (transmission side) and mobile station (receiving side); the goal is to achieve a downlink transmission speed of 300Mbps. MIMO is an antenna technology for wireless communications in which different data streams are spatially multiplexed using multiple antennas for both transmission and reception on the same frequency. Also to be examined is the “handover function” — switching of the connection between two base stations.

DoCoMo will also examine the functionality of applications for voice and image transmission, games and the like, key capabilities impacting the Super 3G system’s marketability.

DoCoMo, aiming to achieve sustainable, efficient use of 3G spectrum resources, is leading the discussion over LTE. DoCoMo believes Super 3G will allow the company to make a smooth transition to 4G in the future.

In July 2006, DoCoMo began accepting proposals from suppliers seeking to develop Super 3G equipment and expects to complete development of Super 3G technology by 2009.

Press release

Tokyo, Japan, June 26, 2007 - (JCN Newswire) - NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries today unveiled new discounts on two-year billing plans for families and individuals, offering substantial reductions on basic monthly charges from the first year and rising to as much as 50% in later years.

The new “Fami-wari MAX” plan will enable each subscriber in a family to receive the discount rate of the longest-subscribing family member, or a maximum of 50% for subscribers who have been with DoCoMo for at least 11 years.

Applicants must subscribe to the Family Discount billing plan, which currently accounts for more than 70% of DoCoMo’s total subscribers.

read more about it here..

I think this article would be very useful to those who have been experiencing phone problems with their network.

Niigata Quake Affects Mobile Services

Several mainstream media reports indicate the powerful earthquake which struck northern Japan on Monday has caused disruption to communications services in the country. The earthquake struck just off the coast of Niigata prefecture, the magnitude 6.8 quake registered an intensity of 6+ on Japan’s scale of 0 to 7, in three locations. As a result of the temblor major telecommunications carriers have imposed restrictions on phone calls into and out of the affected area.

NTT East Corp., the major fixed-line provider in the area, has activated its “disaster dial 171″ service that allows people in the area to leave voicemail messages that can be checked by those in the rest of the country.

The earthquake damaged 93 wireless-communications base stations operated by Softbank. The damage disrupted part of the company’s wireless services in Niigata and Nagano, said Katsuhide Furuya, a Softbank Mobile Corp. spokesman.

From Wireless Watch Japan

DoCoMo introduced a string of new handsets recently and one of them is the LG Chocolate phone. Now, if you haven’t seen the chocolate phone, i have two words to describe it - deliciously sexy. The phone is a slider phone and it comes in a sleek dark chocolate color. Check out the offer DoCoMo is offering with this handset:

New from Wireless Japan.

Nokia’s luxury brand, Vertu, is said to be heading for Japan shores in late 2008. From the looks of it, the vertu I mean, it looks pretty sleek to attract the Japanese prospects. Of course, cellphones are dependable gadgets by most Japanese - whether it’s to know of the weather, the stock market, the traffic news, or acting as a mobile wallet, Vertu has to live up to that.

Since the sleek design of Vertu includes a diamond on its body, it is without a doubt (in my opinion) that it will definitely appeal to the younger generations. I am sure you heard how well the phones with Austrian crystals (via SOftbank) did. Diamond? It’s every person’s best friend in this case.

The deal that NTT DoCoMo and Hutch Essar signed last December on the i-Mode licensing in India has been given the boot. Apparently it is due to the change of environment in both companies so both parties have come to a conclusion that it wasn’t time yet it seems.

NTT DoCoMo and Hutch Essar Not to Proceed With i-mode Contract

Tokyo, Japan, May 7, 2007 - (JCN Newswire) - NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced that the company and Indian mobile operator Hutchison Essar Ltd. (”Hutch”) have agreed not to proceed with the contract signed on December 15, 2006 regarding the licensing of the i-mode(TM) mobile Internet service in India.

DoCoMo and Hutch had been striving to launch i-mode service in India within 2007. Due to the changes in business environment, both companies concluded that it would be difficult to launch i-mode service at this time and agreed not to proceed.

*i-mode and FOMA(TM) are trademarks or registered trademarks of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. in Japan and other countries.

Imagine what it would have done to India’s economy.

Taken from wireless news japan.

Symbian Ltd. announced their 20 millionth handset sales in an announcement earlier last week. The Symbian OS Smartphones have been doing particularly well in Japan as the growth was driven by remarkable innovation that the OS is because of it ability to reduce time-to-market and meeting the requirements of handset vendors and network operators. In a nutshell, it’s an excellent gadget that has been found useful by the majority of Japanese.

Now after the announcement Symbian announce another ad to bash European and American mobile markets in their BooHooForYou commercial. I personally think it’s funny as hell as the Pizza chains have been doing this tactic for the longest time against each other, but in the Japanese culture this is viewed as extremely rude. According to Wireless Watch Japan:

Anyone who understands how Japan’s business and wider civil culture operates will tell you that remaining humble - especially when you otherwise have strong reason to brag loudly in public - is not only expected and practiced, but to do the opposite is highly insulting. Thus Symbian’s BHFY comes across as at least culturally inappropriate and at worst directly insulting.

Whoops Symbian, I don’t think this culture appreciates your humor. You should just stick to the whole conservative touch of your Chairman shaking hands with the relevent folks. Smile. Bow. And. Continue. Your. Excellent. Work. Deal.

If you do, you should read this little article:

DoCoMo 2.0 — Message Lost in Translation?

On Monday 23 April NTT DoCoMo unveiled their latest 3G handsets, the 904i-series, at a press conference held here in downtown Tokyo.

WWJ pointed to this webcast of their presentation, which clearly stated from the very beginning the new “DoCoMo 2.0” campaign theme.

We shouldn’t really be surprised that the main message, from Japan’s dominant mobile operator, contained in the announcement somehow managed to get 2.0 attention from the mainstream media. With few exceptions, the entire tech web focused on the motion-sensor for gaming application. Few if any noted how ironic it was that while the company insisted it was going to “focus on offering unique applications and services that will be difficult for the competition to duplicate” they were in fact introducing a functionality which was originally made available in Japan [video here] by Vodafone and Sharp over two years ago.

Perhaps the gritty details — such as the fact that all five new models will (of course) ship pre-installed with the Osaifu-Keitai FeliCa mobile wallet together with related security services — are less appealing to the overseas media than Nokia’s recent announcement that they, too, have the mobile wallet urge?

To be sure, there were a few interesting new offerings in Natsuno-san’s presentation, such as the 2-in-1 dual-identity option and flat-rate access to Napster’s full music library service. However, one of the main observations we take away from this news is that the rest of the world still tends to focus only on the most quirky headlines (wait until the MSM find out about this one).

Source: Wireless Watch Japan

Dolce and Gabbana is selling DoCoMo’s gold plated RAZR phones in their retails stores now until the end of May this year. It’s uhm…really garish in my opinion because the phone is SO bling! The gold phone is priced at 75,000 yen each and it comes with a D&G engraving on the cover. Go figure, otherwise D&G won’t be selling them in their glass shelves.

If you buy the gold Razr phone you’ll get a cool looking box, an eel skin cover, a strap with a D&G logo on it, some pictures to look at on the phone’s screen and, best of all, “four original ring tones… selected by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana.” What’s their taste in music like, anyone?

Source: Metropolis

Walt Disney Japan is stepping into the mobile world with a social network. They made the announcement for the public launch of Wonder Days, a cartoon that’s of Disney’s production. The announcement made is in Japanese only though.

Click on this link to see the video of the Social Network that Disney has to offer HERE.