US wireless carrier Sprint is looking to Japan and South Korea for
inspiration and content for its forthcoming high-speed mobile
Internet service.
"The fact that we are here [at Sun Microsystems' JavaOne conference
in Japan] shows the US wireless market is open for your business,"
Paul Reddick, Sprint's vice-president of business development, told
a hall full of Java developers.
Sprint plans to emulate NTT DoCoMo's success with Java and its
I-mode mobile Internet platform, said Reddick, crediting the
ability to bill for premium content as being key to the success of
I-mode.
Under DoCoMo's system, the company collects the money from
consumers through their monthly bills. This means it is economical
and easy, for both content providers and users, to pay small
amounts of money, typically between $1 (£0.70) and $2.50 per month
in the case of I-mode. DoCoMo also charges a flat commission of 9%
for handling the billing.
Wireless Internet services have typically been less successful in
the US and Europe than in Asia. However, Reddick said this does not
mean consumers will not eventually adopt them.
Sprint is upgrading its code division multiple access (CDMA)
network, scheduled for the summer of 2002, when the company plans
to switch on a CDMA2000 1x system that will allow packet data
transmission at speeds of up to 144Kbps.
A further upgrade to 288Kbps is planned for the end of 2002, said
Reddick, adding that the carrier's future plans call for speeds of
up to 2.4Mbps in 2003.
The company's Java plans centre on Sun's Java 2 Micro Edition
(J2ME), a version of Java for mobile and portable devices, and the
Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP), a set of JavaTM
application program interfaces that pair with the connected limited
device configuration (CLDC) and make the runtime environment for
mobile devices.
The basic foundation is common across all carriers running Java on
mobile phones. One exception is the proprietary class libraries,
which each carrier has developed to cover control of functions not
specified in MIDP.
Reddick said that Sprint would, like other carriers, have its own
extensions. These will be published, although this means that
applets will not be able to run on the handsets of other carriers
without modification.