Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access

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Mobile phone and data
standards

GSM / UMTS Family

GSM
GPRS
EDGE (EGPRS)
HSCSD

W-CDMA
- UMTS (3GSM)
- FOMA
UMTS-TDD
- TD-CDMA
- TD-SCDMA
HSPA
- HSDPA
- HSUPA
HSPA+
GAN (UMA)

Pre-4G

UMTS Revision 8
- LTE
- HSOPA (Super 3G)

cdmaOne / CDMA2000 Family

cdmaOne

Pre-4G

Other Technologies

Pre-4G

Frequency bands

FOMA, officially short for Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access, is the brand name for the 3G services being offered by Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo.

FOMA was the world's first W-CDMA 3G service when launched in 2001. FOMA is compatible with standard UMTS, both via the radio link as well as via USIM card exchange, and hence provides several alternative options for global roaming: either with or without change of handset. Since mobile services in Japan are generally more advanced than in most other countries, e.g. FeliCa-i-Mode Wallet Phones, i-Mode mobile data services etc, to obtain full benefit of FOMA services local Japanese handsets are used.

Initially - as the first full-scale 3G service in the world^{[citation needed]} - FOMA handsets were of experimental character targeting early adopters, and were big, had poor battery life and the network covered the center of Japan's largest towns only. For the first 1-2 years, FOMA was essentially an experimental service for early adopters - mainly communication industry professionals.

Around March 2004, with almost full national coverage including subway stations and the inside of most major buildings^{[citation needed]}, and with the introduction of DoCoMo's 900i series of handsets, FOMA achieved the breakthrough into mass sales, and sales soared. As of September 2006, FOMA has over 29 million subscribers and is the fastest growing cellphone network in Japan^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Spectrum Allocation - FOMA Plus Area

FOMA Plus Area uses 800Mhz Band. This allows better coverage in rural areas where there are greater distances between subscriber & base station. But 800Mhz FOMA Services is limited in rural areas because 800Mhz is also used for 2G PDC services. However, 2G service have been decreasing enough to use 800Mhz band for FOMA, and MCA service which was using 800Mhz band before is stopped, so NTT DoCoMo have plan to use 800Mhz for FOMA in urban area