TechJapan

KDDI announces Fall/Winter 2006 au services

Mobile Phones / AU
Posted by zmcnulty on Aug 29, 2006 - 11:53 AM

KDDI isn't NTT DoCoMo; they're not just going to throw out a bunch of handsets without services that support their new features. That's why KDDI has announced a whole bunch of new services to go hand-in-hand with their announcement of a those new handsets [1].

The new services are:

TV Phone Service
EZ Channel Plus
au My Page
EZ News Flash
EZ Keitai Arrange
Address Book Entrust Safety Service
Decoration Mail
Picture Talking Mail

Oh giggity! More details on each new service inside.

TV Phone Service

KDDI's new TV Phone service for au is intended for use with CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev.A, slated to be launched in December.

One of the big selling points of au's TV Phone service is the fact that users can use TV Phone with people even on different networks. That being said, in the event that those who you want to call are au users, you're in luck -- as many as 5 people can participate in a single "Group TV Phone" session. One person's video will be sent to all participants in the session.

When the service launches, the "W47T" and "DRAPE" handsets will support it. Other handsets that support Rev.A will also support the new service when they come along.

No add-on charges apply for using the service, but TV Phone calls are calculated as costing 1.8 times as standard phone calls. Impress Watch gives the example of a person with a 4,700 yen/month "Plan S" with 30 seconds of a call costing 16.8 yen, but when they use TV Phone, it will be 29.4 yen. Free minutes won't apply to TV Phone either.

It is possible to use TV Phone in Rev.O (CDMA 1X WIN) service areas, but the performance of the video will be far better in Rev.A service areas. According to Impress Watch's report of the announcement event, the reporter felt as though au's offering had less block noise than did DoCoMo's existing TV Phone offering.

Another part of the service is "EZ Avatar," allowing users to replace their own picture with that of an avatar that talks on their behalf.

[2]

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30746.html [3]

Press Release:
http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2006/0828g/ [4]

EZ Channel Plus

EZ Channel Plus is au's new service that takes the place of the existing "EZ Channel" service.

The new service delivers video content to users' handsets in the middle of the night so they can watch it at their convenience during the following day. The technology behind the new system is BCMCS -- Broadcast/Multicast Services -- which requires no additional hardware for distribution purposes. The four handsets to support the service at its launch in September will be the W43H, W43CA, DRAPE, and W47T.

The videos themselves are encoded using the H.264 video codec, so supported handsets must have an H.264 decoder to play the content. There is however a level of content protection for EZ Channel Plus, meaning users cannot save programming on external memory cards. Furthermore, users cannot manually save content; old content will be automatically overwritten when new content is downloaded.

When the service launches, four programs will be available: "LISMO Channel," a music program from KDDI and record companies, "EZ TODAY's Watch Plus," a news/weather program provided by KDDI, "Chaku Uta Ranking Plus," a ranking program provided by Label Mobile, and "Yoshimoto Industries Plus," a comedy program offered by Fandango. Each is free to use, but transmission costs about 315 yen per month, and requires packet transmission options to be on a user's plan. To celebrate the launch of the new service, au will be waiving the 315 yen transmission fee until the end of December.

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30752.html [5]

Press Release:
http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2006/0828a/ [6]

au My Page

au My Page is the company's new personal portal service offering a whole range of options to au users. It's free to use, and includes a variety of functions, such as "My Album" for saving/sharing images, "My Blog" blog service, "My Schedule" scheduling/weather service, and "My Area Search" that is linked with EZ Navi Walker.

When accessed from a mobile phone, au My Page will display news, various tools, bookmarks to EZweb sites, saved address data, and so on. The entirety of this page is customizable via an AJAX web interface accessible via PCs.

My Album allows users to save as many as 100MB worth of photographs, and users can choose to make their album public, protected with a password, or private. Although My Album can be used as a photo storage service for My Blog, the pictures aren't hotlinkable, so they cannot be used with other blog services. KDDI is looking into the possibility of allowing users to save copyrighted contents such as Chaku Uta and BREW appli, but that it would be "technically difficult" to make that happen, so don't cross your fingers.

The scheduling and address book functions of au My Page have no limitations on capacity. Those who have DUOGATE IDs can view this same data from their PCs. KDDI is also planning mail integration; not only will you be able to view all of your au mail (at least until it hits 100MB) via a web interface, KDDI also mentioned that they are "looking into the possibility" of integrating au My Page mail with Gmail.

My Area Search is a function that is linked with EZ Navi Walker that lets users search the nearby areas of two pre-registered locations for things like cafes.

My Site allows users to make certain elements of their browsing habits available to the public, such as what EZweb sites they are registered with, their access history, and their saved bookmarks. Other users can access this information to tell what sort of browsing habits other users have. Furthermore, when looking at the access history of a particular page, users can tell what other sites the viewers have visited.

When the service launches, the W43H, W43CA, DRAPE, and W47T will be able to save and recover data from the service using the internal menu options of the handset. Those handsets with support for BREW 2.1 or above can use an EZ Appli to do the same thing. 1X handsets cannot save email. Handsets such as the INFOBAR that support only BREW 2.0 cannot use data save/recovery functions.

Through the "EZ News Flash" service, the W43H, W43CA, DRAPE, and W47T can display information from "My Schedule" as a ticker on the idle screens of their handsets. BREW 2.1 or above handsets can display this information using a BREW appli. BREW 2.0 or below handsets must access schedule data through their browser.

[7]
[8]

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30755.html [9]

Press Release:
http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2006/0828b/ [10]

EZ News Flash

EZ News Flash is another service that takes advantage of BCMCS, and is completely free to use.

The service consists primarily of a ticker on the idle page of a user's handset that shows the latest headlines, weather info, and so on. According to KDDI, this ticker won't really be available for third parties to use; news comes from newspaper companies, and weather information comes from weather information companies. So don't expect the ability to get your favorite RSS feeds on your handset's idle screen.

KDDI stated that this service isn't limited to news headlines; they're able to transmit the actual article itself. From 6AM until 12AM, KDDI plans to transmit new data every hour, with as much as 200KB of data every time.

The W43H, W43CA, DRAPE, and W47T will support the new service when it launches. Since it requires BCMCS support, handsets that can't use BCMCS are out of luck.

[11]

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30751.html [12]

Press Release:
http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2006/0828c/ [13]

EZ Keitai Arrange

The new W41SH and W43SA both support a new service called "EZ Keitai Arrange" that allows users to change their menu icons, idle screen, and ringers in one go. Think of it as the ability to change a phone's "theme," rather than individual elements of its design.

EZ Kaitei Arrange is based on a user interface customization solution from InnoPath Software in the US. The customization options are extensive, going all the way to the icons used to show remaining battery life and reception level.

Contents providers will be able to offer new themes, and 27 sites are planning to provide contents such as "Hello Kitty" and "Mobile Suit Gundam." End users, however, will not be able to transmit this data on their own.

[14]

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30757.html [15]

Press Release:
http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2006/0828d/ [16]

Address Book Entrust Safety Service

Address Book Entrust Safety Service is a service that pretty much every provider in the world should offer; it allows users to save their phone's address book on a server.

Owners of the W43H, W43CA, DRAPE, or W47T will be able to select the "Entrust Address Book" option from their address book options menu, and send it to the server. Other handsets can use the new service through an EZ Appli. The first time your address book is saved, the whole thing will be saved, but from the second time only changes to the book will be changed.

Of course, recovery of the data is also possible. Using a DUOGATE ID, users can view/edit their data, and recover it using their handset. The service will be free to use.

[17]

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30759.html [18]

Press Release:
http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2006/0828e/ [19]

Decoration Mail

Decoration Mail brings much-needed HTML mail support to au handsets. It is supported by the W43H, W43CA, W43SA, DRAPE, and W47T.

HTML mail support allows users to add things like underlines, different colors, backgrounds, GIF images, and so on to their emails. Templates can also be used. "Decoration Transformation Send" will also automatically send URLs to those without HTML support for their mobile phones, who can view that URL using their browser and see the email as it was meant to be seen.

Because Decoration Mail is basically the same thing as NTT DoCoMo's "Deco Mail," au said that the handsets of other providers should also be able to view this HTML mail. Contents providers will be offering data and templates for this new feature.

[20]

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30760.html [21]

Press Release:
http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2006/0828f/ [22]

Picture Talking Mail

Picture Talking Mail is a new service that allows users to send emails that contain animations where characters such as animals have mouths that move in synchronization with a recorded audio message.

Using "Veepers" virtual character developed by Pulse Entertainment of the US, Picture Talking Mail involves the movement of the character's lips, eyes, and neck, giving a naturally synthesized experience. The W43SA, W47T, and DRAPE can use the service for 105 yen per month.

Those who do not want to record their voice using the included BREW appli can use a preset voice. There are also over 100 characters to choose from. Though only supported handsets can create the animations, a URL is sent to the addressee, which allows them to download a 3GPP2 video file. Therefore, in theory, any handset that supports 3GPP videos can be on the receiving end. Animations can be as long as 15 seconds.

[23]

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30761.html [24]

Press Release:
http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2006/0828h/ [25]

BCMCS, EV-DO, EZweb