TOKYO, JAPAN July 12, 2001 --- NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight regional companies announced today that it has selected Miss Hikaru Utada, as the main celebrity to be used in the advertising campaign for the expansion of its 3G service, FOMA. Miss Utada, is the most popular Japanese R&B singer, and her first album achieved the highest sales ever of any album in Japan. The ad campaign will start around the time when FOMA expansion phase is launched in October 2001.

NTT DoCoMo decided to use Miss Utada for the ad campaign because of her high popularity among all segments of the population regardless of gender and age. In addition, her image-characterized as "budding potential," "innovative," and "international"-matches the brand image that NTT DoCoMo wants to promote for its FOMA service.

The company introduced FOMA service on May 30, 2001, when the company began providing it to 4,500 selected monitors. "FOMA," which stands for "Freedom Of Mobile multimedia Access," is based on W-CDMA technology that allows users to transmit large volumes of data with a maximum downlink speed of 384 Kbps. With FOMA service, customers can enjoy a variety of rich content, including movie trailers and music. NTT DoCoMo's goal is to offer a mobile multimedia communications service that can be accessed freely from anywhere at anytime.

NTT DoCoMo is going to start distributing Hikaru Utada's songs via the company's music distribution service, M-stage music, beginning July 25, 2001. The service will begin on a trial bases as of July 15. At present, M-stage music service is available only for users of PHS devices. However, the distribution of music is largely regarded as a key multimedia application for 3G service. In light of this, NTT DoCoMo started M-stage music service on January 15, 2001 with the aim of leading the development of this type of service.