Foma

FOMA, short for Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access, is the brand used by NTT DoCoMo for its third-generation mobile telecommunications services in Japan. Launched in 2001, FOMA marked DoCoMo's deployment of a nationwide 3G network based on the UMTS/W-CDMA standard, building on the company's earlier PDC 2G system. The service integrated voice, SMS and data, and supported i-mode, a pioneering mobile Internet and messaging platform that helped popularize mobile content in Japan.

Technically, FOMA operated on 2100 MHz UMTS networks and used the W-CDMA air interface. Data speeds evolved over time, with initial offerings providing modest mobile broadband and later upgrades introducing higher-speed services. These included performance enhancements and later HSPA-based improvements that delivered multi-megabit-per-second peak rates in some areas. FOMA was gradually complemented and overtaken by DoCoMo's 4G LTE network, initially branded as Xi, and, from the 2010s, by 5G services.

In market terms, FOMA helped expand mobile Internet usage in Japan, supporting not only consumer services but also i-mode's ecosystem of applications and services. It faced competition from other carriers' 3G networks and from rapid shifts to 4G and 5G infrastructure, which led to gradual decommissioning of older 3G networks.

Today, FOMA is primarily of historical significance as DoCoMo's 3G platform, illustrating the early mass-market deployment of mobile broadband in Japan and influencing subsequent generations of mobile services.