www.nttdocomo.com

NTT DoCoMo announced that the number of subscribers to the 3G FOMA service nationwide passed the 1 million mark as of yesterday, two years after launch of the service.

DoCoMo has striven to improve handset quality, lengthen battery life and expand the area of network coverage. It has trimmed handset weight to a sleek 109g and beefed up battery standby time to approx. 310 hours.

To cost-effectively expand coverage area, the company has developed micro-base stations for its FOMA service, and now provides network availability to 96% of the nation's population. Overall network accessibility will be further expanded to 99% of the population by the end of March 2004. To facilitate highly advanced network services inside buildings and underground malls as well, DoCoMo plans to have a total of 1,600 indoor micro-base stations in place by the end of March 2004.

This winter and next spring, DoCoMo intends to unveil even more advanced FOMA handsets, incorporating high-volume i-appl(TM) enabling users to enjoy especially rich mobile content. With ever greater user-friendliness, the company also expects an increasing number of subscribers to make full use of their videophone and videomail capabilities.