NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest cellular telecommunications carrier and
one of the biggest supporters of third generation (3G) wireless
services, is delaying commercial launch of its 3G service by five
months, and will instead focus on limited trials from May.
The delay will prove embarrassing for DoCoMo, which had promised a
roll-out in late May and launched a publicity campaign surrounding
the service, pegged as the world's first commercial 3G
service.
Under the company's new plan, it will launch an "introductory" 3G
trial service in the Tokyo area on 30 May. The service will be
limited to around 4,000 customers, said Pat Kuwahata, a spokesman
for DoCoMo, and will switch to a full commercial service on 1
October.
He said, "We will charge the normal communications fees to
customers except for the basic monthly fee and handset charge." He
added that during the introductory period, handsets will be lent to
customers.
DoCoMo is being forced to switch gears on the service because of
delays in build-out and testing of its network and the
handsets.
"If you use our 3G terminal in your office or your home we cannot
guarantee that everything is OK," said Kuwahata. "This is DoCoMo's
mission, all we have to do is provide a 100% guaranteed service to
the public. We are not able to guarantee that at the moment because
we cannot ensure whether it is a stable system and stable
network."
As late as last month at the CeBit trade show in Hanover, Germany,
DoCoMo was proudly promoting its upcoming service and telling the
thousands of visitors to its booth that it would be launching
commercial service in Tokyo in May. Executives flown over from
Japan to meet the press and other industry leaders also spoke of
the launch preparations and reiterated that May was the firm target
date for the commercial launch.
Questions had arisen, within the press and in industry circles,
about DoCoMo's ability to meet the date after carriers around the
world started delaying their own planned launches and handset
providers began warning that they wouldn't be ready on time.
Only two handset makers will be ready to sell telephones at the end
of May, DoCoMo confirmed today. Matsushita and NEC had recently
neared completion of their first handsets and non-working
prototypes were shown at CeBit.
The vast majority of the ten companies signed up to make 3G
handsets, which include major Japanese electronic companies and
Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, have said their products won't be
available until later this year or next year.
Such problems, coupled with the large investments required to build
the network and doubts about whether consumers would flock to the
new systems to enjoy services like mobile videoconferencing,
already have caused other carriers to delay the launch of their
networks.
In Japan, DoCoMo's move mirrors that of J-Phone Communications, a
domestic rival of DoCoMo, which in March delayed the roll out of
its service by six months until July 2002, and blamed the slow pace
on lagging hardware development.
Beyond the embarrassment, the delay may also slow the deployment of
3G services around the world. Many companies had been looking to
Japan as a testing ground for the new technology and several
foreign telecommunication equipment vendors had signed joint
development pacts with Japanese companies in the hope of gaining
access to knowledge learned from DoCoMo's network rollout.
Indeed, it was DoCoMo which began bringing telecommunication
equipment makers together in 1998 to start work on a new global
standard because it was keen to avoid a repeat of the current
situation in which the standard adopted by Japanese carriers is
used nowhere else in the world. Japan uses Personal Digital
communications (PDC) and only recently launched a Code Division
Multiple Access (CDMA) network. The popular European Global System
for Mobile communications (GSM) is not used in Japan.
DoCoMo intends to reveal more details of the service planned for 30
May later this week.
Martyn Williams