AT&T and DoCoMo plan 3G wireless network here

TOKYO » NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's biggest mobile-phone company, said it will offer technical support worth as much as $24 million for AT&T Inc.'s construction of a high-speed mobile-phone network in Hawaii.

The network, which will use a high-speed standard known as W-CDMA, will allow for international roaming in Hawaii by DoCoMo's Japanese cellular phones, which are incompatible with existing U.S. cellular networks.

The companies plan to begin the service on Oahu this year and expand it to the rest of the state in the first half of 2008, Tokyo-based DoCoMo said in a statement today.

In 2001 DoCoMo became the first wireless company in the world to launch such a high-speed wireless service, known in the industry as 3G, for third generation. 3G networks can reach speeds of 2 megabits per second.

DoCoMo has some 51 million customers, more than half of which use its high-speed service, which includes wireless credit-card and electronic-wallet functions.