Japan’s eAccess targets 5 mln mobile users by 2012

SINGAPORE, Oct 18 (Reuters) – Japan’s third-biggest Internet access provider, eAccess Ltd , is targeting 5 million voice and data customers by 2012 for its soon-to-be launched mobile service and expects to take the firm public, its president said on Wednesday.

eMobile Ltd, a 46-percent owned subsidiary of eAccess that won one of three new licences to operate mobile phone networks in Japan, expects to win most of its customers in the corporate sector, President Toshio Yasui told Reuters.

Around 93 million Japanese have mobile phones — about 73 percent of the total population. The market is dominated by NTT DoCoMo , KDDI and Vodafone Japan, which was bought this year by Softbank .

“Yes, it’s a small number, but we are not going to compete with the three big guys,” Yasui said. “We are very cost competitive, and what we are targeting is to be profitable, not to (compete) on size.”

The firm has raised $3 billion in equity and debt financing to fully build and roll-out its service nationwide, said Yasui, speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore.

“We have private equity investors and there are expectations for us to go public,” Yasui added. “But we have to be profitable first.”

He declined to provide financial targets or a listing timeframe, but said eMobile was targeting EBITDA margins in excess of 30 percent, hoping to emulate eAccess.

eMobile sees its niche in offering high-speed connections to corporate users — and not by competing for mobile-phone users in the mass market, Yasui said.

On-the-move customers might use its service to access always-on productivity measurement applications or to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations or Excel spreadsheets online, Yasui said.

eMobile is targeting a March 2007 launch for its data service, which will allow Internet-ready portable devices such as laptop computers and mobile phones to access the Internet at speeds of up to 3.6MB a second — enough to download songs and movies while travelling in a train or car.

Voice services will follow a year later, Yasui added.

Sweden’s Ericsson and China’s Huawei Technologies Co. [HWT.UL] are helping the firm build high-speed third-generation (3G) wireless infrastructure across Japan, and eAccess has said it aims to have deployed its own network by October 2010, when a roaming contract with DoCoMo ends.

Source- http://sg.news.yahoo.com