26th April, 2004

NTT DoCoMo Chief Keiji Tachikawa Says Its New Flat-rate High-speed Service Is Just The First Step In "Pioneering New Services"

NTT DoCoMo (DCM) has long been one of the world's wireless pioneers. In the late 1990s, the Japanese outfit launched the most successful cellular Internet service, i-mode, followed by one of the first commercial third-generation (3G) networks in 2001. But in the past few years, DoCoMo stumbled as it tried to launch its high-speed service while competing with upstart rival KDDI.

Q: Why adopt the same pricing model as KDDI?
A: It's time to do so. The problem here is that customers can't calculate easily how much it costs to send a photo because they don't know how many kilobytes [there are] per photo. That's part of the reason that customers are demanding a flat-rate scheme.
People can easily tell with voice -- if they talk too long, they will have a high bill. But in the content-delivery service, with high-resolution videos and pictures, your bill could skyrocket without you noticing it. So in order to free users from such concerns, we have decided to have a flat rate.

Q: DoCoMo boasts that it has 3 million subscribers for FOMA, your 3G service. But your rival, KDDI claims to have more than 13 million customers for its 3G service.
A: If you call their technology 3G, then we may say they're ahead. But they're based on a different technology. The have approximately 13 million subscribers, but most of them are migrators who changed from a previous model within their own customer base. [KDDI's] total subscriber base is 16 million, so they don't have much more to grow. For our part, we have 45 million [total subscribers,] and these will migrate to 3G gradually over time.

Q: What do you say to critics who contend that DoCoMo's 3G launch has been disappointing?
A: Our service commenced in 2001, the rollout started in 2000. The pace of our rollout is much faster compared to peers in other markets. As of the end of March, coverage was 99% of the nation. At the end of March, 2003, it was 90%.

Q: Some critics of 3G contend that the advent of Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies will make it easy for people to avoid using 3G. What's your reply?
A: The number of Wi-Fi subscribers is not very significant in Europe -- and you can easily count the number of Wi-Fi subscribers in Japan. Wi-Fi and 3G and other technologies can co-exist. The usage is different.

Q: What will 4G be like?
A: The speed will be 100 times faster [than 3G]. Our business will look completely different in 2010.

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