Let me answer this rhetorical question
with another rhetorical question:
Of what use were all those ISDN payphones?
Getting literal for a minute: I did, a time or two
in the mid-90's, download my e-mail from an ISDN
payphone onto an HP200LX palmtop and scroll
through it while standing on that long rolling
walkway at Ebisu station, feeling ever so cool, so
21st century, because I was getting my e-mail on
the move. And in Japan! Whoopee.
Notably, however, I used the analog port on
the ISDN payphone, and it was always a
near thing: would I get all my e-mail before
the batteries drained?
Face it: how many times have you seen
anyone actually using those phones for
data transmission?
Back to the present, and to the rhetorical: the
main use, as I see it, of all those ISDN payphones
going in during the early 90s was that overamped
geeks like me would go back to the States and
say "Japan's SO-O-O futuristic -- they've
even got ISDN payphones!" It was a digital
Potemkin Village fresco over what was really
a rather stagnant situation domestically. USE
the technology? Why USE the technology when
we can just sell it to the West? And use Japan's
streets as a display window for an otherwise-
invisible product!
Now maybe this strategy has misfired, in the
case of FOMA/Japan 3G. But then, it misfired
in the case of ISDN, which I suspect has never
really paid back on the investment made here,
and which got blindsided by DSL in the U.S.
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nik Frengle" <eseller@eimode.com>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 2:23 AM
Subject: (keitai-l) What use is FOMA?
>
> After taking a really good look at DoCoMo's pricing plan, I am truly
curious as to who is expected to use FOMA, and for what.
[snip]
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Received on Fri Sep 7 07:37:22 2001