NTT expands support staff for Japanese smartphone users 10-FOLD
To better help smartphone users, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo Inc. (9437) has increased assistance providers 10-fold to about 2,500 and will send highly knowledgeable salespeople to all of its shops by next fall.
The mobile carrier receives 4,000 to 5,000 smartphone inquiries a day, with 70 per cent of them concerning Google Inc’s Android operating system. Previously, 250 support staff in Tokyo and Okinawa handled all such calls.
Now, calls regarding smartphones can be taken by any of the company’s customer support centers across the country, since some 2,500 employees have undergone smartphone training. A support manual including Q-and-As has been prepared as well.
DoCoMo will also dispatch sales staffs that have earned internal certification for their smartphone expertise to all of its 2,400 retail shops by the end of next September. Currently there are only 20 such qualified salespeople, most of them in greater Tokyo.
DoCoMo’s smartphone sales are targeted at 1 million handsets in fiscal 2010. The company expects half of its customers to own smartphones in three to four years.
DoCoMo increases shareholding in PLDT (Philippine)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The shareholding in Filipino fixed line and cellular operator Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) has been increased by Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo.
It has also been reported that after the transaction, DoCoMo holds 20.8% of PLDT’s stock which has increased from 16.52% in March.
KDDI to reduce stake in J:COM (Japan)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Japan’s second largest telecoms group KDDI Corp is set to buy a reduced stake in the firm from its owner US-based Liberty Global to scale back its aspirations for Japanese cable network operator J:COM. On January 25, a USD4 billion cash deal was signed between KDDI Corp and cable TV operator Jupiter Telecommunications (J:COM) from Liberty Global Inc. as per which 38% stake of the latter was acquired by the former.
Through this deal, KDDI hopes to get an access to a potential 3.2 million households for telephony services and simultaneously reduce its reliance of using NTT’s fibre-optic networks.
Soon after that, the deal got entangled and investigation into the legality of the plan was started by the regulators who were looking to slap an USD884 million fine on KDDI. According to KDDI spokeswoman Kayo Sekine at that time, the company will cooperate if the FSA should make a formal request for information and adhere to any FSA guidance. However, no comment was given on the rumored USD884 million fines.
Case Study of the Mobile IP Centrex: A paper by NTTDoCoMo
We just came across a case study of the Mobile IP Centrex.
The paper explores how at the initial stage of mobile phone penetration, cell phones were primarily used for business. With increased penetration, mobile phone use expanded vastly from business alone to personal and onto entertainment among other utilities. In 2004, a handset was released with a wireless LAN function, and mobile phones came to be incorporated into the ICT solution.
Hiroyasu YUHASHI of the Mobile Society Research Institute at NTT DOCOMO, INC believes that now, Mobile IP Centrex is one of the most popular ICT solutions for utilizing mobile phones.
In this paper, he has introduced a manufacturing company as the latest example of an enterprise providing an ICT solution using mobile phones. With the adoption of the mobile phone, the office environment was restructured. In addition, the increasing use of mobile phones changed the way people worked. Progressing from the introduction of the example, he considers the construction of a communication network for business as a result of the increasing use of mobile phones.
