| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : OCTOBER 18, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| INTERNATIONAL -- EUROPEAN COVER STORY
'I'm Online All the Time, and It's Free' (int'l edition) It's lunchtime in Tokyo's Ginza district, and Namiko Sugiyama, a 28-year-old legal secretary, grabs her Internet-ready cell phone and heads outside. As she meanders, she clicks on the Net menu, then on e-mail, where she scrolls through the dozen or so messages friends have sent. She moves on to headlines and scans for breaking news, a service that costs her less than $1 a month. ''I learned about the nuclear accident right away, long before I would have seen it on TV news,'' Sugiyama says of the Sept. 30 calamity northeast of Tokyo. ''I'm amazed at how useful the Internet is.'' She's not the only one. Since the advent of Internet-capable phones seven months ago, some 3 million Japanese have purchased handsets and signed up with mobile carriers. It's nothing short of a revolution: After trailing the U.S. and Europe, Japan has emerged as a front-runner in wireless Net communications. In the next two years, the number of Japanese accessing the Web with smart phones will exceed 20 million, according to a recent industry report. That compares with 17 million computer users who have gone online in the past five years. ''Japan already has more than 50 million mobile phone users,'' explains Keiichi Enoki, gateway business director for NTT DoCoMo, the country's largest wireless operator, with 27.3 million subscribers. ''The cellular phone has emerged as the ideal Internet-access tool.'' It helps that Japan makes the world's smallest, most function-packed handsets. Take Sugiyama's model, purchased for $115 when she signed up last April with DoCoMo's ''i-mode'' service, which serves two-thirds of wireless Net-phone subscribers. A featherweight 90 grams, the device fits in her palm and boasts a crystal-clear LCD screen that's half again as large as what she had before. There's an answering service, a schedule book, and a memory bank for 500 phone numbers and 50 e-mail messages. Most important is its Internet capability, which provides a constant Web connection. ''I'm online all the time, and it's free,'' raves Sugiyama. Actually, she's charged a token fee of a few dollars a month for the Internet connection. By contrast, a 24-hour online connection over a leased fixed line in Japan would set her back at least $360 a month. With i-mode, Sugiyama is charged only for the volume of packet data downloaded or transmitted. Like most Net-phone users in Japan, Sugiyama checks her e-mail frequently. She scours real estate sites for an apartment and orders books through Kinokuniya, a chain that, like thousands of other businesses, has created a Web site with small-screen text. DoCoMo adds the cost of any service or purchase to her monthly bill. This is just the start of Japan's Net-phone wave. In March, 2001, DoCoMo will launch its ''third generation'' service based on the standard known as wideband CDMA. That allows lightning-fast data transmission and high-quality video communication. Since Europe will adopt the 3G standard a year later, Japan could be a key place to watch the new era in wireless communications dawn. By Irene M. Kunii in Tokyo _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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