AT&T Wireless Starts NTT DoCoMo-Style High-Speed Mobile-Data Service
Posted on: Thursday, 22 July 2004, 06:00 CDT
Jul. 22--NEW YORK -- AT&T Wireless Services Inc., an affiliate of Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc., has started offering a mobile phone-based fast data service in the United States, enabling users to browse the Web, e-mail and share video clips, the first for individual subscribers in the country.
The broadband mobile data service started Tuesday in four major U.S. cities -- Detroit, San Francisco, Seattle and Phoenix, according to the third-largest U.S. mobile service provider.
The new third-generation service is based on the W-CDMA data transmission format developed by NTT DoCoMo and is used to power its FOMA mobile service in Japan. W-CDMA is short for wideband code division multiple access.
AT&T charges $24.99 per month for the new service. Optional features such as video clips, news, weather information and sports news are available for an additional $5 a month.
AT&T Wireless plans to start the service in two other U.S. cities later this year.
AT&T Wireless Chairman John Zeglis said in a press statement, "Our collaborators and partners at NTT DoCoMo played a major role in helping us bring our 3G services to market." NTT DoCoMo holds a 16 percent stake in AT&T Wireless.
Although Cingular Wireless LLC, the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier, is set to buy AT&T Wireless for $41 billion to create the largest U.S. wireless carrier, Cingular has said it is also willing to offer NTT DoCoMo's 3G service, but on a trial basis.
Verizon Wireless, currently the biggest wireless carrier, has already started its own 3G mobile service for corporate users.
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