DoCoMo to curtail New Year's e-mail

December 31, 2001

Afraid a deluge of New Year's greetings could bring the system crashing down, e-mail and telephone services will be restricted on NTT DoCoMo's cellular phones for the first several hours of Jan. 1, company officials said.

NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. (NTT DoCoMo), the leading operator of cell phone services, will restrict use of e-mail on its i-mode and telephone services by up to 87 percent, the company said.

The restrictions are aimed at young people with i-mode cell phones, a group considered so chatty as to have the potential to overload the system with New Year's greetings.

In defense, the company will only allow one e-mail in every eight to reach its destination. The restrictions on e-mail will begin a few minutes before midnight and end ``several hours'' later. Restrictions on voice calls will end sooner than for e-mail, the company said.

NTT DoCoMo's i-mode users topped 30 million as of Dec. 25.