Train commuters in Japan make the most of their mobile phones

Convergence & VoIP Alert NetworkWorld.com | VoIP & Convergence Research Center | Update Your Profile Train commuters in Japan make the most of their mobile phones By Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick At the recent NEC Global Analyst Symposium, Larry had the chance to talk about how fixed mobile convergence (FMC) in Japan is further along than in the United States. Hideyuki Hirata, general manager at NEC Corporation, pointed out that one big difference is that about 95 million people in Japan enjoy the benefits of a 3.5G mobile network so of the 88 million people who access the Internet in Japan, some 71 million do so using their mobile phone (numbers as of December 2006). Hirata points out that since Tokyo is so crowded and many employees go to and from work by train, using a mobile device to extend the office while commuting in an often-crowded space makes sense as the most efficient use of travel time. Read full story Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. For more detailed information on most of the topics discussed in this newsletter, connect to Webtorials, the premier site for Web-based educational presentations, white papers, and market research. Taylor can be reached at taylor@webtorials.com Larry Hettick is a Principal Analyst at Current Analysis, the leading provider of competitive response solutions. A 25 year industry veteran, he has focused on Convergence and VoIP since 2000. MORE STORIES SPONSORED BY SHORETEL Discover the advantages of Pure IP ShoreTel enables companies of any size to seamlessly integrate all communications - voice, data, messaging - with their business processes. Independent of device or location, ShoreTel's distributed software architecture eliminates the traditional costs, complexity and reliability issues typically associated with other unified communications solutions. 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