NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Monday it has agreed with KT Freetel Co., South Korea's second-largest mobile-phone operator, to jointly invest $200 million in Malaysian wireless carrier U Mobile Sdn. to increase overseas earnings.
DoCoMo and KT Freetel plan to each own 16.5 percent of U Mobile, the companies said. The carriers will help U Mobile in its third-generation, or 3G, mobile-phone business, and promote roaming services using the Malaysian operator's infrastructure, they said.
KT Freetel and DoCoMo are seeking new sources of income overseas as more than 75 percent of people already own handsets in their domestic markets. DoCoMo, whose profit declined in the past two years, bought two Guam wireless operators in 2006 and set up an office in Vietnam in September.
DoCoMo owns a 10.5 percent stake in Seoul-based KT Freetel. Both companies offer services based on the wideband code division multiple access, or WCDMA, high-speed network.
U Mobile is a unit of MiTV Corp., which in 2006 won a license to offer 3G services in Malaysia, where about 70 percent of the country's 27 million population own wireless handsets.