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KDDI eyes North America for expansionFresh from its success in its home market, Japan's No: 2 – KDDI – is looking to expand into North America according to recent reports. It plans a tie up with Sprint Nextel. Rumours are suggesting that KKDI will get together with fellow cdmaOne operator, Sprint Nextel, to offer a mobile phone service in the USA. The service is clearly targeted at the many Japanese speakers living in the States. KDDI will apparently rely on handsets produced by Sanyo. In effect, KDDI will become an MVNO in North America sharing Sprint's network in much the same way Virgin already does. The notion of 'roaming' – where you use an existing handset on a network other than your 'home' network is still an unfamiliar concept in the cdmaOne fraternity. KDDI hopes to get the service going this month [April]. The news follows an exceptionally good set of figures in the Japanese market for KKDI. It added an impressive 2.75 million users in the year which finished last month [March], compared to 1.48 million for Japanese giant NTT DoCoMo. There's still a heck of a long way to go since KDDI's total is now some 28.2 million subscribers whereas DoCoMo has an impressive 52.6 million. Trailing behind in third is Softbank which bought the old Vodafone network and has some 15.9 million subscribers. Some observers have put KDDI's success down to the advent of number portability so that users can switch networks and keep their old phone number. However a DoCoMo spokesperson pooh-poohed the notion. He was quoted as saying, "In contrast to projections before the start of (number portability), there is not a large use of it. This is in line with our expectations." What both events do seem to indicate, however, is that KDDI is leveraging the existence of its cdma200 1xEV-DO network and does appear to have a perceived lead in the Japanese market as a result.The full Inquirer story ... KDDI looks to expand in the USA |
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