The Japanese carrier has inked a 10-year licensing agreement with Bouygues Telecom, France’s third largest carrier, making it the first carrier to license the technology which has not received investment capital from DoCoMo.

By the end of the year, Bouygues will launch the service on its GPRS network, and later on its UMTS network if the carrier is granted a 3G license in France.

Both KPN Mobile of the Netherlands and AT&T Wireless of the U.S., of which the Japanese carrier has a substantial stake, are launching i-mode services.

According to Keiji Tachikawa, CEO of DoCoMo, the service has already been successfully deployed by KPN Mobile’s Germany subsidiary E-Plus, with its subsidiaries in the Netherlands and Belgium to follow, and by AT&T Wireless in America.

DoCoMo’s i-mode Internet-access software has taken Japan by storm, attracting 32 million users, but will it appeal to Europeans, who still remember the failed mobile Internet service, or WAP, launched two years ago, and Americans, for whom high-speed Internet is synonymous with the PC? Regardless, its impact will, more than likely, shape what other European and American carriers offer their customers.

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