Japan’s wireless Web network will open to outside providers

In a country of about 125 million people, the Japanese wireless Web service has signed up 21 million subscribers as of the middle of this week, beating its own optimistic forecast of 20 million by the end of March. Delivering color graphics and even sound from i-mode-enabled websites to the screens of mobile telephones, the service has been a runaway hit for DoCoMo, the wireless subsidiary of Japan’s dominant telecom, NTT.T’S THE ONLY success story in the world of wireless Internet; European and American attempts to market phones using the Wireless Applications Protocol (WAP)have met with resounding consumer indifference. Now DoCoMo plans to expand i-mode’s reach. At a Thursday press conference in Tokyo, company president Keiji Tachikawa announced plans to give outside providers, including not only Internet service providers but also rival telecommunications companies, access to the i-mode network. “We didn’t expect this service to grow as much as it has,” Tachikawa told reporters. “We have judged it would be better for customers to use the service in a greater variety of ways,” he said. Current uses of i-mode include e-mail, stock-price lookups, movie listings and restaurant information. Users can even download images of cartoon characters, and play a fishing video game. Indeed, it’s expected that online gaming will become a an ever more popular important i-mode feature, especially among game-crazy Japanese teens. Already Sony has said it will market cables to connect i-mode phones to its Play Station game consoles. And not just in Japan. Earlier this month, DoCoMo said it expected to make i-mode services available in the United States in the first half of 2002, through its American partner AT&T Wireless. And in Europe, the company has joined forces with KPN NV of Holland and Telecom Italia Mobile to offer i-mode over the coming generation of mobile phones based on General Radio Packet Services (GPRS). This may occur in the second half of this year.