NTT DoCoMo has agreed to sell its entire 20% stake in
Hutchison 3G UK (H3G UK), worth £120m, back to Hong Kong parent
company Hutchison Whampoa in a move that frees the Japanese mobile
phone company to team with another UK operator for launching
I-mode.
"We are open for alternatives in the future," an NTT DoCoMo
spokesman said. "This is an important market for I-mode."
NTT DoCoMo's decision to divest its stake in H3G UK ends months
of speculation about its partnership with the 3G high-speed mobile
internet operator.
In October, NTT DoCoMo president and chief executive officer
Keiji Tachikawa signalled the first signs of a split with the UK
company when he said the Japanese operator is negotiating with
other operators that "are willing to provide I-mode in the UK".
The spokesman declined, however, to comment on who those
operators could be. The three most likely candidates are O2, Orange
and T-Mobile UK.
Unlike earlier WAP offerings, I-mode is an easily navigable
package of preselected services. Its format is nearly identical to
regular web pages. NTT DoCoMo provides the software and branding
and leaves mobile phone operators to cut deals with local content
providers.
Designed for packet-based network technologies such as GPRS and
Wideband CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), I-mode has been
particularly popular in Japan, where it has drawn more than 40
million subscribers, according to NTT DoCoMo. It is available in
several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain
and the Netherlands. In February, the service hit the one
million-subscriber mark in Europe.
Whether NTT DoCoMo will have any better luck convincing O2,
Orange or T-Mobile to launch I-mode in the UK remains to be seen.
Orange and T-Mobile have already launched their own
operator-branded mobile internet services, following in the
footsteps of Vodafone, Europe's largest mobile phone company, which
has successfully launched its Live! offering.
John Blau writes for IDG News Service