KDDI, one of Japan's leading telecommunications groups, said yesterday it had signed up two million users to its third-generation (3G) mobile phone service after five months on the market.

KDDI also said its 3G service was on track to sign up seven million subscribers by the end of next March.

That would represent more than 40 per cent of KDDI's mobile subscribers, which reached 16.7 million at the end of July.

KDDI 3G subscriber numbers contrast sharply with the disappointing outlook for 3G in Europe, where many operators are abandoning, postponing or scaling back their 3G plans.

In Japan, NTT DoCoMo, which introduced its 3G service six months ahead of KDDI, had signed up 127,000 3G users at the end of July.

The contrasting experiences reflect the different strategies of European operators and DoCoMo on one side, which chose to use the W-CDMA standard, and KDDI and Korean operators on the other, which use a technology called CDMA2000 1X.

KDDI's 3G standard is an advanced version of its 2.5G CDMAOne standard. It allows users with 3G handsets to use the fast 3G service where it is available and a somewhat slower but more widespread service where 3G is not. This has also enabled KDDI to keep 3G handset costs close to 2.5G levels.

In contrast, DoCoMo's 3G service, FOMA, uses a completely new standard and needs a new infrastructure.

It suffers from narrow coverage, requiring users to have two handsets to be sure of connection. The new technology also means handsets are costly and batteries short-lived.

While DoCoMo marketed the video phone as a major benefit of 3G, KDDI has focused its services on GPS navigation, video downloading and camera-phone applications.

DoCoMo said about 30 per cent of FOMA users own a video phone, which it calls a visual phone, but some users have complained that they cannot use the phones because few others own them. - (Financial Times Service)