Friday, 25 August 2006

NTT DoCoMo to Sell Japan's first HSDPA Mobile Phones

Japan’s NTT DoCoMo has announced that it will begin selling Japan’s first HSDPA-compatible handset, the 3G FOMA N902iX HIGH-SPEED. The handset is capable of packet downlinks of up to 3.6Mbps, about 10 times faster than current FOMA handsets.

From August 31, all of central Tokyo will be included in these HIGH-SPEED areas, and all major Japanese cities will be covered by the end of October. DoCoMo also plans to broaden the areas to cover 70% of the national population by the end of March 2007 and 90% by the end of March 2008. Outside these areas, both uplink and downlink speeds can still reach as high as 384Kbps.

The handset will be compatible with DoCoMo's new Music Channel service, also starting from August 31. Users will be able to automatically download music programs of about up to one hour during the late-night hours for listening later. It also supports the Chaku-Uta Full service, which enables the downloading of complete music tracks for normal playback or to create clips for ringtones.

DoCoMo rival KDDI Corp. also plans to upgrade its network starting in December. KDDI's new network, called EV-DO Rev.A, offers a similar download speed to HSDPA but has a faster connection to upload files from the phones to the network.