Following the award ceremony, EMC met with Mr. Enoki, who spoke about the success of i-mode and the future of the wireless industry. A young woman sells DoCoMo access devices in Tokyo. The sets are virtually given away. DoCoMo believes the value is in the information. NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service has become enormously popular since its introduction two years ago.
Reliability is crucial to our business.
Where other service providers might expand their data centers incrementally over the course of several years, DoCoMo has had to work in 'fast-forward' speed because of the rapid subscriber growth. This has placed a heavy burden on our IT infrastructure that only the most robust and innovative solutions can fulfill. Customer expectations are extremely high in this business. We hear about service outages at Internet service providers or content providers, but consumers simply won't tolerate an interruption in their mobile phone service. It's simple to operate and offers a variety of content, and it's also convenient and cost-efficient.