Greek 0operator has met its deadline of providing both 3G and i-mode services by the time the Olympic Games kick off in late summer.
The operator launched i-mode services on 7 June, using phones and service platform from NEC. The service uses the NEC N 331i, N 400i, N 410i and the Panasonic P 341i phones, and NEC’s Mobile Internet Platform to provide services.
The platform consists of portal and mail gateways as well as subsytems to manage service introduction and billing.
Cosmote customers do not pay for activating or subscribing to i-mode but only pay for using the service and not for accessing it. Usage of i-mode (including cost of navigation of the portal, and of all official and independent sites and e-mail) is charged with 1 eurocent/KB, while Cosmote customers only pay for the quantity of data received or sent and not for the time spent connected. The browsing of every official i-mode site consists of both free and paid content with a monthly subscription ranging from Euro0 up to Euro3.
Independent sites have no monthly subscription and charging only includes browsing based on the data sent or received.
Cosmote will be offering i-mode to all its customers completely free of charge (without monthly subscriptions to all official sites and no charge for any data sent or received) until July 15th 2004.
Cosmote begins commercial launch with over 100 official Greek and international i-mode sites. Content partners among others include CNN News, the Cartoon Network and in the near future Disney, as well as interactive game developers (including Gameloft, Namco and I-Fone) known for games such as Pacman and Tetris.
Apart from the official i-mode sites, Cosmote customers can access a number of independent i-mode sites.
Cosmote customers can access the i-mode sites by entering the portal through the i-menu, the main service menu, with just the touch of the yellow-coloured key on their Cosmote i-mode handset.
The handset i-menu includes 14 thematic content categories, from news, weather, sport, through to games, travel and on-line shopping.
The i-mode launch follows an earlier limited launch of 3G service.