E-Plus kills i-mode service

E-Plus, the KPN-owned mobile operator from Dusseldorf, is ending its i-mode service from April 1. Subscribers will be offered a Surf & Mail Flatrate service instead. E-Plus adopted i-mode in 2002, but as in many other European counties the Japanese-inspired service never took off. E-Plus never revealed the number of i-mode …

[Morely Dotes]

What is i-mode?

For those who, like me, had never heard of it before, here's the Google link to the definitions:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS252US252&defl=en&q=define:i-mode&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

Short version: It's a proprietary method of using a cell phone as a modem.

[pctechxp]

mobile web browsing

not a patch on its PC counterpart.

[Alessandro Longo]

Italy has imode

Actually Wind in Italy is still running i-mode

http://www.wind.it/imode/it/index.phtml

[Ian Ferguson]

Re: mobile web browsing

Mobile browsing is fine, it's when the operator tries to keep users within a walled garden that it goes pear shaped.

I used O2 i-mode; all the 'services' were crap. Fortunately the phone's browser was capable of basic rendering of the rest of the web.

Ironically, I switched to an iPhone contract, and O2 kept charging me for i-mode services for several months afterwards. The only way to unsubscribe from services was through i-mode itself; something I obviously couldn't do. I've managed to convince O2 to stop charging me now, but no luck in getting my money back.

[Anonymous Coward]

France too

And Bouygues has it too, albeit at the bottom of their offers page.

http://www.internetmobile.bouyguestelecom.fr/offres.php

http://www.internetmobile.bouyguestelecom.fr/offres_illi.php