Once burned, twice shy was among the messages delivered to an audience of telecom executives by Nobuharu Ono, an executive with Japan’s largest mobile phone company, NTT DoCoMo, which has 80 million subscribers and 56.1 percent of its market.

Ono, who is president of NTT DoCoMo USA Inc., told the audience of San Diego Telecom Council members his company was being cautious with making large investments in the United States following the merger of AT&T Wireless into Cingular. NTT DoCoMo had invested $10 billion in AT&T Wireless. It cashed out in the merger.

Before he spoke, Ono presented a short film that peeked into the future, showing wireless technology being used for near science fiction uses, such as full-motion video on watches worn in jungles and gloves that allowed a veterinarian to remotely diagnose a horse’s hurt leg.

In Japan, 44 million of the NTT customers use data services for e-mail and Web surfing. Entertainment and restaurant information are the most popular Web uses. The company is 18 months into its use of a new 3G service in Japan which Ono says got off to a bumpy start with poor handsets and limited service. Coverage is good now and Ono expects 25 million subscribers by year’s end.

Among DoCoMo’s plans is to move information from a person’s wallet — a driver’s license, credit cards, etc. — onto a smart card in a phone. In Japan, the company began offering the service in July and expects 10 million users by the end of the fiscal year.

When it comes to partnering with carriers, DoCoMo for now is focusing its efforts in Europe and Asia. Its U.S. projects include public WiFi service and a Japanese language version of the Blackberry. To a crowd heavy with Blackberry users, Ono noted, “In Japan the Blackberry is not so popular.” Instead, those services are built into DoCoMo’s iMode service.

DoCoMo prices its data services deliberately low, with a maximum of about $3 per service download. The company keeps 9 percent of the price as a commission and distributes the rest to the creators and others involved with the content.

Speed rules in telecom. DoCoMo services now top out at 384kps but the company next year will start offering a 14 megabit per second service that is much faster than most cable modems in the U.S. It is working on 4G technology that would move data at a maximum speed of 1 gigabit per second.

During the Q-and-A session, Ono said the company finds that videos of about 30 seconds in length work best for customer downloads. He noted that in the United States, more communications are done on personal computers because access to the machines is greater, while in Japan the phones are used. He also noted that U.S. phone companies charge more for services, a comment that drew murmurs of agreement from the crowd. For example, the cost for an unlimited data plan is about $40 a month, about half the charge in the United States.

When asked about the strategy for dealing with carriers in the United States, Ono replied the DoCoMo global strategy called for focusing on Asia and Europe where its iMode service just hit 1 million users. The U.S. market, he said, is “tough,” although the company does remain interested in investing.

— Tim McClain