TOKYO-Japanese mobile operator J-Phone Co. Ltd. announced that its board of directors proposed a resolution to change its name to Vodafone K.K., which will completely rebrand the mobile operator under its U.K.-based parent’s name. K.K. stands for Kabushiki Kaisha, J-Phone said.
The resolution is subject to shareholder approval at an extraordinary general meeting set for Sept. 25.
The company name change comes after J-Phone announced in May it would completely adopt the Vodafone brand Oct. 1. The group said in July it would change the name of its mobile Internet service from J-Sky to Vodafone Live! in October.
J-Phone is the third-largest operator in Japan’s highly competitive market. J-Phone currently has 75,000 W-CDMA third-generation users, while NTT DoCoMo Inc. has 786,000 W-CDMA subscribers and KDDI Corp. has more than 9.72 million CDMA2000 1x customers.
KDDI has said its 3G subscribers account for more than half of its total subscribers. DoCoMo has more than 45 million total subscribers, and J-Phone said it had nearly 14.6 million subscribers at the end of August.
