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21 January 2004 - Alcatel and Fujitsu Limited today
announced the official opening of a FOMA® showroom showcasing
NTT DoCoMo’s third-generation (3G) FOMA mobile communication
services in France. The new facility is located in the
premises of Alcatel, Fujitsu’s 3G partner, in the suburbs
of Paris. This is the only FOMA showroom available in
France.
This showroom enables visitors to directly access NTT
DoCoMo’s groundbreaking FOMA network and experience
the world’s first commercial 3G end-user services based
on W-CDMA technology. To achieve this, Alcatel and Fujitsu,
who jointly operate the Paris FOMA showroom, connected
this facility to the FOMA network in Japan through an
international private line. Fujitsu has provided the
FOMA handsets and base station.
By offering industry opinion leaders the opportunity
to experience live FOMA 3G services, the project is
meant to foster a better understanding of business opportunities
that could be generated by innovative 3G services, and
it lays the ground for the successful introduction of
3G/UMTS commercial services in Europe. With this advanced
facility, Alcatel is in an ideal position to leverage
and extend the mobile multimedia services experience
it has already gained through major customer projects
and its world-wide network of 3G Reality Centres. 3GPP-compliant
third-generation systems are developed by Evolium SAS,
a joint venture company established by Alcatel and Fujitsu.
A wealth of feature-rich 3G services, already enjoyed
by NTT DoCoMo’s subscribers in Japan, are available
in the Paris-based FOMA showroom: i-mode® , i-appli®,
Multi-access and Internet access on PC. In addition,
the showroom will feature international mobile video
telephony between FOMA users in France and UMTS ones
in the UK.
“FOMA is the world’s first commercial 3G mobile communications
service based on W-CDMA technology,” stated Dr. Kota
Kinoshita, Executive Vice President and CTO, NTT DoCoMo,
Inc. “Thanks to the Paris FOMA Showroom, French and
European industry opinion leaders are now in the unique
position to enjoy, in a real life situation, the state-of-the-art
3G FOMA mobile communications services as if they were
in Japan. We are thankful to Fujitsu and Alcatel whose
dedicated teamwork made the success of this project
possible,” Dr. Kinoshita added.
“Fujitsu is a major strategic partner of NTT DoCoMo
for W-CDMA technology,” stated Hiroaki Takeichi, Corporate
Vice President, System Products Business Group (Telecommunications)
of Fujitsu Limited. “Fujitsu’s strategy is to provide
quality network and IT solutions to its customers, in
particular to NTT DoCoMo. Building upon the success
of Evolium SAS, the Alcatel-Fujitsu joint venture for
3G infrastructure, the implementation of the Paris FOMA
Showroom is yet another foundation of the important
business potential generated by our W-CDMA collaboration
with Alcatel,” Takeichi added.
“Alcatel’s mobile strategy is driven by end-user services,“
stated Marc Rouanne, Chief Operating Officer of Alcatel’s
mobile activities. “For Europeans, this FOMA Showroom
is an invaluable window on DoCoMo’s advanced services.
It will allow us to further increase our knowledge and
understanding of end-users’ experience with mobile multimedia
services, in complement to our 3G Reality Centres program,
with the overall objective to accelerate the delivery
of appealing 3G services,” Rouanne concluded.
Alcatel's highly efficient business model is based
on its multi-standard Evolium™ solutions for GSM (800/900/1800/1900
MHz), GPRS, EDGE and UMTS. Evolium SAS, Alcatel’s joint
venture with Fujitsu, delivers a mobile infrastructure
that is 3GPP-compliant, field-proven and capitalizes
on the Japanese 3G experience.
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