FOMA

Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access (FOMA) is the brand name of the W-CDMA-based 3G telecommunications services being offered by the Japanese telecommunications service provider NTT DoCoMo. It is an implementation of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and was the world's first 3G service to commence operation.

NTT DoCoMo also offers HSPA services branded FOMA High-Speed (FOMAハイスピード), which offers downlink speeds up to 7.2 Mbit/s and uplink speeds up to 5.7 Mbit/s.

NTT DoCoMo developed the W-CDMA air interface, which is a form of DS-CDMA (Direct Sequence CDMA), in the late 1990s. It was later accepted by ITU as one of several air interfaces for IMT-2000 and by ETSI as one of three air interfaces for the UMTS.

NTT DoCoMo originally planned to launch the world's first 3G services, initially branded Frontier of Mobile Multimedia Access (FOMA), in May 2001. However, by May 2001, NTT DoCoMo had postponed the full-scale launch until October 2001, claiming they had not completed testing of their entire infrastructure, and would only launch an introductory trial to 4,000 subscribers. In doing so, they also renamed the service to Freedom of Mobile multimedia Access. In June 2001 trial subscribers complained the mobile phones had insufficient battery life and crashed frequently, that there was inadequate network coverage, and that there were security issues within the handset itself. As a result, DoCoMo recalled 1,500 handsets by the end of June 2001. FOMA successfully launched in October 2001 providing mobile telecommunications coverage to Tokyo and Yokohama.

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