In other words operators can communicate with subscribers when they are near to their phone and can take advantage of offers. If attractive services are promoted over radio there is a definite peak in the response that can be measured. In fact, I was having lunch with a couple of colleagues and within a short space of time all three of us received an SMS from the operator, telling us that if we purchased our Valentine's flowers from the mobile service, our partners would get a free box of chocolates - so that shows you the use of the medium to promote to your own subscribers and make them aware of offers. This is good way of reminding those are aware of the service and also getting new subscribers on board. Yes DoCoMo has a billing relationship with its subscribers that is used to great effect.
End users trust the company to bill items along with phone calls.
Well you said that not me. I think the important thing to remember about DoCoMo is that the cap means the value of the products purchased is quite low through i-mode but the aggregate, the sheer volume of transactions is high. They were able to launch the i-mode system because they had to upgrade their system to 2.5G anyway because they needed the voice capacity. Effectively they created capacity and then they filled it with i-mode. Our method of building that trust and extending it to a bigger market is part of an announcement we are going to be making in a couple of weeks about an electronic purse.