.gif)
Au (mobile phone operator)
Encyclopedia
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
brand in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
marketed by KDDI Corporation
KDDI
is a Japanese telecommunications operator formed in October 2000 through the merger of DDI Corp., KDD Corp., and IDO Corp. It has its headquarters in the Garden Air Tower in Iidabashi, Chiyoda, Tokyo....
in the main islands of Japan and Okinawa Cellular in Okinawa.
Naming
According to the ZYXYZ company, the brand establisher, the name "au" is based on the JapaneseJapanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
verbs for "meet" (会う) and "unite" (合う) (both pronounced au). However, KDDI explains au comes from two letters which stand for few words. "A" is for access, always and amenity, and "U" is for unique, universal and user. There's also a phrase, "access to u(you)" that goes along the brand name.
History
The network that would eventually become au was originally set up as two networks: DDI and IDO. IDO's network was based upon the NTT Hi-cap analog cellular system, and began operations in December 1988 in the Kanto and Tokai regions. DDI's network was run by independent phone companies, and began service in 1989 using the TACS system elsewhere in Japan. Nippon Idou Tsushin (IDO) was owned by Toyota, whereas DDI was owned by Kyocera CorporationKyocera
is a multinational manufacturer based in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. The company has diversified its founding technology in ceramic materials through internal development as well as strategic mergers and acquisitions...
.
au K.K. (株式会社エーユー) was established in November 2000 by the Kyocera companies as part of the DDI Cellular network. In 2001, the company was merged into KDDI (which had been formed in 2000 by the merger of DDI, KDD, and IDO), but its brand name was retained and applied to all mobile phone service under KDDI group.
au established a nationwide 3G
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
network in 2003, replacing its previous cdmaOne service with CDMA 1X WIN (1xEV-DO Rev A) service.
From 14 October, 2011, au will sell the iPhone 4S
IPhone 4S
The iPhone 4S is a touchscreen slate smartphone developed by Apple Inc. It is the fifth generation of the iPhone, a device that combines a widescreen iPod with a touchscreen, mobile phone, and internet communicator. It retains the exterior design of its predecessor, iPhone 4, but is host to a range...
.
Products and services
- EZweb: A service which provides various features for mobile phone users, including e-mailE-mailElectronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, webWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
browsing, picture and video sharing, video conferencing, and access to location based services and games. The service runs on traditional cdmaOne mobile phone networks at a data rate of 64 kbit/s or on the new 1xEV-DO Rev A network with up to 3.1 Mbit/s downstream and 1.8 Mbit/s upstream bandwidth. In a surprise move, in spring 2004 au became the first cellular phone based data service provider to offer a "tsukaihoudai" (unlimited use) flat rate plan in Japan. - EZweb@mail: Multimedia messaging service.
- C-mail: Short Message ServiceShort message serviceShort Message Service is a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices...
- EZchakuuta: A service which allows users to use song segments, usually 30 seconds or less, as ring tones. Chakuuta's rights are held by Sony Music Entertainment JapanSony Music Entertainment Japanis Sony's music arm in Japan. SMEJ is directly owned by Sony Corporation and independent from the United States-based Sony Music Entertainment due to its strength in the Japanese music industry....
. - Chaku Uta Full: A service distributing full length songs over the mobile network. The selection offered is mainly pop musicPop musicPop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
. The coding format is 48 kbit/s HE-AACHE-AACHigh-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding is a lossy data compression scheme for digital audio defined as a MPEG-4 Audio profile in ISO/IEC 14496-3. It is an extension of Low Complexity AAC optimized for low-bitrate applications such as streaming audio...
. The size of one piece of music is about 1.5 MiBMIBMIB may refer to any of several concepts:* Master of International Business, a postgraduate business degree* Melayu Islam Beraja, the adopted national philosophy of Brunei* Motion induced blindness, a visual illusion in peripheral vision...
. Downloaded content is secured on a memory card (miniSD, microSD, Memory Stick PRO Duo, M2) plugged into the mobile, using CPRM copy protection. Chaku-Uta Full is the trademark of Sony Music Entertainment Japan. - EZappli: BREWBinary Runtime Environment for WirelessBrew is an application development platform created by Qualcomm, originally for CDMA mobile phones, featuring third party applications such as mobile games. It is offered in some feature phones but not in smart phones...
applications. - EZmovie: Movie player.
- EZchannel
- EZ Machi Uta: A service that allows users to customize their ringback toneRingback toneA ringback tone is an audible indication that is heard on the telephone line by the caller while the phone they are calling is being rung. It is normally a repeated tone, designed to assure the calling party that the called party's line is ringing, although the ring-back tone may be out of sync...
s with music, etc. - EZnavigation: A service which is a component of EZWeb and allows GPS-enabled handsets to plot their position.
- EZnaviwalk: Gives scrolling map and audio navigation to guide you to your destination. Also displays restaurant, shop and weather information for the area.
- EZnewsflash: Using BCMCSBCMCSBroadcast and Multicast Service is an interface for providing broadcast and multicast services in 3GPP2 CDMA2000 mobile networks. BCMCS can be used to transfer light video and audio clips or other data to a large group of mobile subscribers in an efficient manner. To do so, BCMCS is a so-called...
technology. - PC Site Viewer
- LISMOLISMOLISMO is an online music service provided by au, a Japanese mobile phone brand run by KDDI, a Japanese telecommunication company. This service uses a mobile phone as a music player. This service was introduced on January 19, 2006, and the service began operating at the end of January in Japan. The...
: au Listen Mobile Service. (Character mascot for this service is LISMO-kun). - Global Passport: Global roaming service (CDMA and GSM).
- EZ FeliCa: Osaifu-KeitaiOsaifu-Keitai, literally meaning "Wallet Mobile", is a trademark of NTT DoCoMo, which developed the system. It refers to mobile phones that integrate Sony's Mobile FeliCa ICs, as well as to services provided by applications on these phones....
. - EZ television: An EZappli when watching analog terrestrial broadcasting.
- EZ television 1seg: Supports 1seg1segis a mobile terrestrial digital audio/video and data broadcasting service in Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru. Service began experimentally during 2005 and commercially on April 1, 2006. In Brazil, the broadcast started in late 2007 in just a few cities, with a slight difference from...
digital terrestrial broadcasting for phones and mobile devices. Also supports data broadcasts. EZ television 1seg does not support analog television.