The world's first super-fast, next-generation mobile phone service began in Japan today - although only as a limited issue of 3,300 handsets in the Tokyo area.
Eager Japanese gadget fans - chosen from 147,000 applicants - lined up at an office of the nation's top mobile carrier, NTT DoCoMo. It did not seem to matter the most glamorous of the new phones, the video-phone, had been delayed for up to a month due to software glitches.
The only models available were an upgraded, speedier version of NTT DoCoMo's current Netlinking i-mode phones and a computer-card model for data transmission.
"My first impression is it's great," said Mr Shintaro Yanagisawa (24) a marketing company employee, who got an i-mode upgrade. "It's so fast."
The third-generation mobile phones - which promise to relay video and eventually allow music downloads - zip data up to 40 times faster than current handsets.
NTT DoCoMo is hoping 3G phones will become portable wireless computers of the future for Web surfing, corporate data transmission and electronic commerce.
AP