Japan Members- What is wireless like over there?

[madmaxmedia]

Hi all,

I am doing some basic research into cell phone usage/features/habits in Japan. I know it's very different, with more advanced data and features, and in general much more overall usage by Japanese users than in the USA.

Can anyone give some brief info/impressions/description of wireless services and usage in Japan? (particularly 3G services)

Also, who are the biggest handset makers for the Japanese market (especially higher-end phones)?

I'm not looking for detailed statistics, just some anecdotal info would be great.

Many thanks!
Steve

[zackepceo]

I can help answer this if it's still valid.

Japanese phones are pretty much ubiquitous and the high price of voice service makes text messaging popular. Japanese mobiles don't use SMS, though, they use a form of email that is actually more similar to enhanced messaging service. i.mode versions of popular websites are pretty much the norm, and intensive data usage is pretty expensive because there are no unlimited data packages like there are in the USA. NTT DoCoMo, the biggest provider of wireless services, has a strange habit of charging by the packet, and each packet costs anywhere from ~$0.001 to ~$0.0001. I think a packet is counted as 512 bytes. There are complicated systems of packaged i.mode discount services, without a special service 100kb of downloaded data would be around $1.60, but with a package $0.35.
All incoming calls are free.

More information is on wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_mobile_phone_culture .

One explaination for the prevalence of 3g service in Japan is that data rates are significantly lower on the 3G networks than the old TDMA-based networks. The standard is WCDMA UMTS and is not quite compatable with the UMTS deployed all around the other parts of the world, although efforts are being made to standardize.