New Mobile VoIP Service to Hit Japan Early

Japanese wireless service company - Japan Communications is reportedly planning to launch what it refers to as an Internet mobile phone service by this July. According to the Nikkei business daily, the company will offer users a mobile phone service for a flat fee every month and will not charge any extra for calls placed the Internet.

Newspapers in Japan have been reporting that Japan Communications hopes to launch what it has been referring to as "the world's first" Internet Protocol mobile phone service in the third quarter of this year. Now it seems that it plans are accelerating.

The move by J-Com will come as another challenge to the established operators in a mobile market where competition is already fierce. The main players, DoCoMo, KDDI Corp and Softbank Corp, have all been busy cutting prices and pushing new services to try to gain new customers and shore up their own subscriber bases.