[LINK] Telstra to licence i-mode

[Tom Worthington]

At 6/10/2004 07:41 PM, Robin Whittle wrote:
>Telstra is to licence Japanese NTT DoCoMo's "i-mode" cell-phone
>"Internet" service". ...

It is not clear what of i-mode Telstra could use in Australia. Certainly 
not the actual handsets. The content would be too Japan specific. The 
billing system might be used. But perhaps the will just licence the brand 
to use with existing phones.

> >From what little I know i-mode is a closed, or largely closed system,
>like AOL, which does various online types of things ...

Yes, think of it as AOL for phones.

>1 - Making WWW-like things and "multimedia" stuff happen over
>     a lousy radio link (I assume GSM GPRS or some 3G data link). ...

I-mode started with a cut down version of HTML to suit slow links and then 
added proprietary extensions. But it is still mostly 2.5G, not 3G.

>2 - Doing this on a small terminal - small display, few buttons ...

Yes.  I-mode is a very good adaption to the limitations of the mobile phone 
size and slow data rate. See my lecture notes for teaching the ANU students 
to do i-mode pages last year: <http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/wd.html#L1198>.

>3 - Micropayments - with some kind of "if-ya-don't-get-watcha-
>     paid-for-ya-getcha-money-back" guarantee. ...

More like "you pay for what you get". But yes, it like 1900 premium phone 
services, where the phone company collects the payments for the information 
provider from the customer via the phone bill.

>But what sucks, to my mind, is that it is not real Internet access ...

No, but it is VERY commercially successful and it works. The European/US 
alternative was very unsuccessful and was not much more real Internet.

If Telstra are smart they will try to emulate i-mode using the new, WAP-2 
phones. These are more in the spirit of i-mode than WAP was and it is 
easier to adapt web content for them. I showed the ANU students how to do 
that this year. My lecture notes are designed for a WAP-2 phone: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2004/wd/mobile.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd ABN: 17 088 714 309
http://www.tomw.net.au PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617
Visiting Fellow, Computer Science, Australian National University
Publications Director, Australian Computer Society