New Japanese Contender Ready to Shake up Market

KDDI founder, Sachio Semmoto, has announced his latest venture with the coming launch of a new mobile service in Japan. Semmoto's new baby, Emobile, will feature no monthly subscription charges and is set to be the first new entrant to the already saturated Japanese mobile market for many years.

Emobile, which has the backing of such heavyweights of the financial world as Goldman Sachs and Temasek, is due to start offering services from 28th March. Users will pay Yen18 for every 30 seconds of call time and the company will also offer unlimited calling packages for Yen980 a month - matching rival Softbank's offer.

Competition in the Japanese mobile market has intensified since Softbank cut its call prices and monthly charges late last year. KDDI Corp, Japan's second- largest operator, countered last week with a package that doesn't charge for calls between family members.

Emobile will initially use market leader NTT DoCoMo's network, with handsets to be supplied by Tokyo company Toshiba and High Tech Computer Corp of Taiwan. Emobile, which started providing wireless Web access last year, said it is building a nationwide network that should be ready for use by October 2010, when its roaming agreement with DoCoMo expires.