TOKYO (AP) — NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile phone company, announced Thursday it will take a 16 percent stake in AT&T Wireless Group, the mobile phone unit of American giant AT&T Corp.
It will pay $9 billion for a share in the U.S. company, NTT DoCoMo said.
With the investment, DoCoMo said it hopes to launch its next-generation mobile phone technology — "IMT-2000" — and its mobile multimedia services in the U.S. market.
AT&T Wireless, meanwhile, badly needs a cash infusion to shore up its shaky finances. It is seeking to protect its credit rating by paying off some $62 billion in debt.
It was not immediately clear if AT&T Wireless would switch to the GSM wireless technology used by NTT DoCoMo and in Europe. GSM has not taken off in the United States.
DoCoMo's wildly popular i-mode has 14 million subscribers in Japan and some 50,000 people are signing up for the service every day, making Japan a global leader in wireless Internet use.