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3 Cos. OK'd in Japan Mobile Phone Market

Posted on: Thursday, 10 November 2005, 12:00 CST

By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO - Three Tokyo-based companies were formally granted access to Japan's mobile phone market Thursday, signaling changes ahead for a sector that has not seen a new entrant for 12 years.

Internet service providers Softbank Corp. and eAccess Ltd., as well as startup IP Mobile Inc., received the approval from Japan's minister of internal affairs and communications, Heizo Takenaka.

The new entrants are expected to stiffen competition in an already competitive, $ 70 billion mobile phone market. All three said they plan to start their new businesses as early as the latter part of 2006.

NTT DoCoMo, the cell phone unit of Japan's largest telecommunications company, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, currently controls about 60 percent of the market, while KDDI Corp. and the Japan unit of British mobile company Vodafone Group PLC split the rest.

Vodafone has recently been struggling as KDDI attracts new users with third-generation services like music downloads. NTT DoCoMo is marketing itself with services that let people to use cell phones to pay for purchases.

"I have good news today," Softbank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said Thursday as he announced the approval at a news conference in Tokyo after meeting with Takenaka.

He said Softbank's entry marks a new challenge to the domination of a former mobile telecommunications monopoly.

Softbank, which has a 42 percent stake in Yahoo! Japan Corp., has been aggressively selling broadband services in Japan and dominates the local market in Internet Protocol telephoning - a technology using data transmission over broadband Internet connections to let people talk by telephone.

Officials from eAccess and IP Mobile also held conferences Thursday.

"Technological innovation is speeding up. Wait just two years - I believe we're going to realize some amazing possibilities," said eAccess founder and chairman, Sachio Semmoto.

Semmoto said eAccess is developing mobile handsets that feature a foldable keypad.

IP Mobile chief Itsuo Sugimura said his company would concentrate on offering wireless personal computer communications services for now.

"We aim to provide broadband Internet services that build on mobile communications," Sugimura said. "This is the start of an Internet renaissance."

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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