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Softbank, McDonald’s to launch wireless LAN service in Tokyo

TOKYO—Softbank and McDonald’s Company (Japan) announced they will jointly launch wireless local area network (WLAN) services at McDonald’s outlets. Starting in the latter half of May, they will launch an experimental service at 20 outlets in Tokyo.

Users of the service will enjoy up to 8 Megabits per second (Mbps) WLAN services based on the 2.4 GHz band once they bring in their PCs to one of the McDonald outlets. McDonald’s Company (Japan) has 3,900 outlets in Japan.

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The monthly charge will be 1,580 yen (US$12.29) for the standard Internet access service and 2,280 yen (US$17.74) for advanced services, including e-mail services. Both firms will also launch public phone service based on Internet Protocol (IP) at these outlets. The charge for a call to any destination including the United States will be 10 yen (US$0.08) for four minutes, but for the first six months, the service will be free.

Yahoo BB, a Softbank Group company, has been providing ADSL service since last August, and recently it launched IP telephony services.

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