Cellular operator J-Phone Group announced Tuesday that it will postpone the planned launch of the next-generation mobile phone service (3G) from December to June 2002, due to technical problems caused by the latest version update of an international standard for the multimedia cellular phone.
The postponement is likely to put a damper on full-fledged competition among telecom carriers for next-generation cellphones, which will have clearer video images and improved sound, industry experts said. Competition was expected to intensify from the latter half of this year.
"We can catch up and make up for the initial delay. We haven't changed our target to cover 90 percent of the population by the end of fiscal 2003," said Takeshi Hashino, managing director at J-Phone Communications Corp., the holding company of the J-Phone group, at a news conference.