3G phones are here

The world’s first third-generation (3G) mobile phone network will be launched
next month by Japanese telecoms firm NTT DoCoMo. The network will be 40 times
the speed of DoCoMo’s hugely successful i-mode, Japan’s equivalent of WAP, or a
European GSM phone. Users will be able to download videos or music. Experts
expect some teething problems. “There always are when you go from the labs to
the real world,” says Falks Mueller-Veest, a telecoms analyst with research
company Durlacher in Britain.