(Almost) I-mode Service Coming in April

DJSK8 Mast0r Ralph McDaniels writes: "Looks like NTT DoCoMo Inc's investment in AT&T last year is coming to fruition as this article from allnetdevices.com lays claim to AT&T rolling out i-mode based services repackaged for the U.S. market as m-mode service with Motorola, Sony/Ericcson, Nokia and Siemens offering the requisite phones to take advantage of it. Not quite 3G, but seems on par with the 2.5G services Verizon recently rolled out, though both are a far cry from the 100Mbit/20Mbit 4G services DoCoMo is already working on."

Comments

Cell phones in theatres

[Dead Penis Bird]

Maybe with this service, we don't have to resort to jamming cell phone transmissions, since people can write e-mails or text messages in case of emergencies.

For those of us....

[PhysicsGenius]

...who don't refer to foreign companies by cozy little nicknames and have no idea what this is about, here's what I was able to dig up (note that it may note be acurate):

I-mode stands for "intellgent mode" or "intelligence mode". Phones with this feature are able to locate their callers within a 10 meter radius due to embedded processing that keeps track of your location at all times and periodically reports back to the cell tower for hand-off purposes.

In other words, no big, just a new application. I'm worried about privacy issues, though.

New phones.

[Lemmy Caution]

Does anyone know whether the new phones will give AT&T customers easy portability through Europe and Asia? Would I be able to take my phone with me, or at least the card? The new phones are GSM after all, right?

Phones

[austad]

The Ericsson T68 will be available from ATT for $199. This is a steal considering it's going for $500 elsewhere.

Also, I've noticed that ATT has had some issues in markets where the I-mode stuff is being rolled out. Lately, people who call me get my voicemail and my phone doesn't ring at all. Many of my friends and co-workers using ATT have noticed this also. They pushed up their release date for this stuff by a few months, so I'm sure they are hurrying to get the networks up and working properly, which probably causes some problems with the current network.

ATT wireless rocks BTW. I've had them for like 6 years, and never had a problem. Even though sprint is coming out with 3G soon, they still suck. Don't ever sign a Sprint contract unless you use a phone from them for a month or so. The service in most areas is spotty, and you will incur roaming charges when you can't get a sprint signal. Several people I know have it for work, and all they do is complain about how much it sucks.

Now my phone will finally work out of the country. Yay.

prediction: They will f*ck up on the content...

[slashdaughter]

The brilliant thing about DoCoMo's i-Mode service in Japan is the way they encourage independant content providers. Several thousand i-mode specific websites are able to take micropayments/subsciptions that appear as very small charges on customer bills. Its a cottage industry that gives consumers some really innovative options and lets many small content providers earn a living. Imagine that!

Wired ran a nifty story on these a few months back:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.09/doc omo_pr. html

But expect ATTW to hoard all the marbles and dole them out to the likes of AOL...

A truly great wireless web service will give incentives to local small-time content developers. But most of what we are seeing in the pipeline will be more of the big boys duking it out for turf that consumers are wary of entering. And losing tons of money in the process.