Technical Challenges for a Wireless Japan
By Douglas Teeple
By now, news of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service has reached all corners of the Internet and mobile industry. The service that provides mobile phone users with an always-on connection was released in Japan in first quarter 1999 and has grown to over 12 millions users as of this writing.
Although DoCoMo has approximately 60 percent of market share in Japan, a number of companies are joining the race. J-Phone's SkyWeb service already holds 16 percent of the market share, and the recently formed KDDI group hopes to compete directly with the NTT giant. KDDI is comprised of international carrier KDD, DDI, and IDO. KDDI has nearly 14 million subscribers, but new subscription rates so far have been low.
Despite i-mode's stunning growth, NTT DoCoMo's competitors may have a fighting chance. As with any service that has a giant customer base, there are bound to be problems. There are worries about the surge in spam messages sent from phone to phone. There are no blocking services at present, and users are frustrated with having to pay by the byte to download unwanted data. A recent survey by Internet.com and InfoPlant show some interesting facts about i-mode usage in Japan:
- the most popular sites are melody and image download sites,
- 40 percent of subscribers use email more than voice calls on i-mode phones,
- 70 percent do not use pay sites,
- 80 percent say i-mode fees are too expensive,
- the most common complaints are about unstable connections.
The i-mode service runs at 9.6
