J-Phone, Hutchison unfazed by DoCoMo's 3G outlook.

EXTRACT: Japan's J-Phone and Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa said they would stand by plans to launch 3G mobile services this year, despite a sluggish start to the high-speed service by industry leader NTT DoCoMo. J-Phone, Japan's third-largest wireless carrier, said it still planned to launch its 3G service in December. The performance of DoCoMo's 3G service is of high interest to J-Phone, since it plans to launch a 3G service based on the same technological standard.

Hutchison Whampoa plans to launch its service in the United Kingdom and Italy in October, and said recently it aimed to sign up one million customers in each of those markets by the end of 2003--less than the 1.5 million target it had previously cited. "For Hutchison 3G, our plans remain unchanged. We will start to roll out phase one to approximately 5,000 friendly customers in October," a spokeswoman said.

More info: http://www.ispworld.com/Reuters/BreakingNews/ 090602_gt21.htm

*** COMMENTARY: J-Phone has said that roaming will be a key part of its 3G strategy. "We've been saying we'll do global roaming with our 3G commercial service and this will be achieved in two ways specifically," says Matthew Nicholson of J-Phone's PR staff. One way is with so-called "plastic roaming," which is achieved by transferring a UIM/SIM card from a J-Phone W-CDMA handset to a GSM handset, thus transferring the subscriber's J-Phone account info to a handset that would then work in a GSM market. The other way is with dual mode technology handsets that will work under both W-CDMA and GSM network systems. He also adds that, at the time of their 3G commercial launch, J-Phone will have global roaming agreements in 50 countries.

Source: Reuters on ISPWorld.com, September 6