au (mobile phone operator)

au Mobile Shop Shinjuku

au (エーユー; pronounced Ēyū) , or au by KDDI, is a mobile phone brand in Japan marketed by KDDI Corporation 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 Japanese 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.^[1]

History

The network that would eventually become au was originally set up as a Motorola-designed car phone network by Toyota Motor Corporation and Kyocera Corporation starting in 1985. Toyota was responsible for the network around Tokyo and Nagoya, while Kyocera was responsible for the network elsewhere in Japan. Kyocera established independent phone companies in each of its service areas between 1989 and 1992 and formed DDI Cellular group, while Toyota's part of the network became a separate company, Nihon Ido Tsushin (IDO), in 1987.

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.

au established a nationwide 3G network in 2003, replacing its previous cdmaOne service with CDMA 1X WIN (CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev A) service.

Products and services

• EZweb: A service which provides various features for mobile phone users, including e-mail, web 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
• C-mail
• 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 in Japan (SMIJ).
• Chaku Uta Full: A service distributing full length songs over the mobile network. The selection offered is mainly pop music. The coding format is 48 kbit/s Advanced Audio Coding. The size of one piece of music is about 1.5 MiB. Downloaded content is secured on a miniSD card plugged into the mobile, using CPRM copy protection. Chaku-Uta Full is the trademark of Sony Music in Japan.

• EZappli
• ezmovie
• EZchannel
• eznavigation: A service which is a component of EZWeb and allows GPS-enabled handsets (such as Sony Ericsson's W21S) to plot their position on a moving map with the use of the NAVITIME Engine.
• EZnaviwalk
• EZnewsflash
• PC Site Viewer
• LISMO: au Listen Mobile Service. (Character mascot for this service is LISMO-kun).
• Global Passport: Global roaming service (Using CDMA2000 network).
• Global Expert: Global roaming service (Using GSM Phone).

References

See also

• KDDI
• LISMO

External links

• au by KDDI

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fr:Au (Japon)

ja:Au (携帯電話)