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i-Mode
Billing System
In less than two years, DoCoMo has attracted wide and diverse
cross-section of content providers, from Dows Jones newswire to Tokyo
Journal event listing to Disney-i (screens), by making it easy and
relatively low-risk for them to set up i-mode sites. Part of the attraction
has been its centralized bill settlement service, which frees content
providers from having to bill thousands of individual consumers, in most
cases, as little as $3.00 a month. The Japanese mobile operator receives a
commission from the content providers, using the billing service, of 9
percent for services purchased.
The Japanese i-mode subscriber is charged a flat fee of ¥300 ($3.00) per
month. Additional fees depend on how much they use the service. When using
the service to access Web sites and send and receive e-mail, the subscriber
is charged ¥0.3 per packet of (128 bytes) transferred data, which is data
send as well as received. The average mobile bill is roughly $30 to $40.
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