John Chapman brims with enthusiasm. The director of Hewlett-Packard's mobile and wireless strategy has just signed a three-year research agreement with NTT DoCoMo, the cellular spinoff of Japanese telecom giant NTT. The goal? To brainstorm the infrastructure for a wireless network with such abundant capacity that, according to Chapman, "we will no longer bother to measure it." Hewlett-Packard has allied itself with NTT DoCoMo-whose name means "anywhere"-because the Japanese firm is the world's leading mobile-Internet provider. An estimated 72 percent of Japanese cell-phone owners routinely connect to the Internet, compared with a mere six percent in the United States. Chapman believes that if Hewlett-Packard can offer Americans rich streaming video, data, graphics and voice over a high-speed network that reaches every street corner, subway platform, beachfront and backyard, they will sign up in droves.
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