Are DoCoMo's lessons transferable to the U.S.?

By John Dix
Network World, 06/18/01

It's de rigueur to hold out NTT DoCoMo's wildly successful iMode cellular system in Japan as the integrated phone/Web future we are certain to encounter here, but it isn't as simple as that.

Infrastructure and cultural differences may account for the success of the technology in Japan, and it might not translate here.

DoCoMo has managed to attract more than 16 million iMode customers in just two years and is said to be adding 50,000 more per day. Customers use their iMode cell/Web phones to check the weather, read e-mail, scan headlines and book reservations.

Those are some of the planned features for fabled 3G wireless nets, the 2M bit/sec systems that DoCoMo and other wireless carriers are building to support even more demanding services, such as video mail.

But where 3G systems require rebuilding cell networks from the ground up, DoCoMo is delivering iMode capabilities with a data overlay network that simply complements the existing circuit-switched cell phone system. Data rates are a paltry 9.6K bit/sec.

So why is iMode so successful, what does it portend for the domestic market, and what does it say about the need for 3G?

DoCoMo did many things right with iMode: It priced the service based on the amount of information downloaded vs. connect time, the approach used by carriers offering services based on the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP); iMode is always on, whereas WAP is more dial-up in nature; and iMode customers can access any Web site (although those supporting compact HTML look best), whereas WAP requires sites to WAP-enable content.

DoCoMo apparently thinks this recipe will succeed anywhere, hence the company's $10 billion investment in AT&T Wireless. And maybe it will. But there are two unknowns. One, fewer people in Japan have Internet access, because it's expensive, so iMode's success may simply reflect pent-up demand that won't materialize here. And two, cell phone penetration in Japan is much higher than in the U.S., so usage here would probably be lower.

While iMode's success in Japan doesn't guarantee similar results here, it should make carriers think twice about the costly leap to 3G. I side with those who say 2.5G, an overlay technology that is always on and supports speeds up to 28K bit/sec (higher later) is good enough for now.

-- John Dix
Editor, Network World
jdix@nww.com