TOKYO-NTT DoCoMo Inc. reported that Cellcom Israel Ltd., the country’s largest wireless carrier with 2.5 million subscribers, launched i-mode service in Israel on its GPRS network.
Five handsets were launched with the service, which is offered in English and Hebrew. The handsets include the NEC Corp. N411i, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s S342i and S410i, Motorola Inc.’s E378i, as well as LG Electronics Co. Ltd.’s L342i. In addition, Access Co. Ltd. said the phones all use its NetFront browser, featuring right-to-left rendering support for Hebrew. Access also will provide its Compact Viewer Plus, a preview and test environment for i-mode content developers that also features right-to-left rendering support for Hebrew.
The service marks the 11th market for i-mode, following Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Australia.
DoCoMo signed an i-mode agreement in November 2004 with Cellcom to provide know-how, technologies and patents necessary to launch the i-mode service.
