Harassed company executive Kento Suzuki is stuck in traffic on what is misguidedly called Tokyo's Shuto expressway, facing an hour's wait before he can reach his high-rise office.

He knows about the wait because his flip-top mobile phone is tracking his position. By dialing a special service, he gets an update on the traffic chaos along his route, as well as a commercial telling him to take the train next time.

No problems. Suzuki-san dials into his office and, using a small camera on his phone handset, conducts a video conference with his marketing team. Then Suzuki's wife rings in. Kento junior went to nursery school with a cough, but her mobile phone screen showed him playing OK.

The school has set up a monitor that she can access with a special number. Suzuki's sales manager is next in the queue. Sensors installed in the company's vending machines and accessed by phone show a big drain on supplies in one remote region. Should he get out the extra product in a hurry? Definitely.

Fantasy? No, says Kieji Tachikawa, the livewire president of NTT DoCoMo, Japan's dominant mobile phone carrier. This brave new world has already arrived, courtesy of the sleek new handsets his company began selling to queuing customers in Tokyo this week.

With its marketing savvy and technical expertise, DoCoMo has already revolutionised the world's second biggest economy, turning it into a global leader in the use of wireless, Internet-enabled communications.

In just two years, the company has amassed 27million users for its I-mode (Internet-enabled) system. Tokyo's subway system is crammed with I-mode "junkies" feverishly punching away at the tiny keyboards as they transmit e-mail messages to each other and scan news and other "packet" sites.

Tachikawa's third-generation technology is a bold attempt to build on that market domination.

If the original analogue portable "brick" was the phone equivalent of a Model T Ford, and the second generation model a Honda Civic, then the 3G successor is supposed to be a Maserati.

The service, laboring under the ungainly moniker Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access, uses a cranked-up network and high-tech phones to, in Tachikawa's evangelical spiel, "enrich human society in the 21st century".

Enrichment takes multiple forms. The 3G system is supposed to offer cleaner reception and hook-ups to the Internet six to 40 times quicker than existing models. For Japan's mobile phone addicted population, that means longer and faster e-mails, more use of special information services and the ability to view and download video images.

Tachikawa's vision is for even more expansive services down the tracks - banking, retailing, movies, even medical monitoring - shifting the mobile phone to the very centre of modern life.

One of the three phones that DoCoMo placed on sale this week has a small video camera attached, allowing users to view each other while they talk. It's already a big hit. By mid-week, the first stocks of the Panasonic video model, despite costing a hefty 76,800 yen ($A1280) plus 10,000 yen ($A170) monthly subscription, had disappeared.

Other phone carriers around the world who have invested huge sums in their own 3G experiments are nervously watching DoCoMo's launch. An estimated $A200 billion has been spent on spectrum licences alone as governments and business scrambled to take advantage of what was supposed to be the next sure-fire hit in the IT boom.

Much of that investment now looks absurdly over-valued in the light of the past 12 months. The economic squeeze has forced consumers to review their need for the next high-tech gadget. Companies are finding it harder to justify the enormous funds necessary to build new networks.

Phone carriers in the US, Europe and Australia are delaying and downsizing their 3G plans. Even DoCoMo, one of Japan's biggest companies by market value, has found the going tough with its new generation phones.

The silver-haired, US-trained DoCoMo boss admitted his original plan had been to roll out 3G in 1995. Technical glitches forced a delay in the original May launch. And despite an extensive trial period, the new service is plagued by problems. Triallers have reported operational hassles. The new phones soak up power so quickly that users are forced to tote around replacement batteries. Others have complained of poor reception, high drop-out rates and incompatibility with other IT equipment.

It is still unclear whether even Japan's gadget-mad consumers are willing to fork out the extra cash required to acquire and use the new phones when their existing models are already bristling with services.

Atsunori Kamata, pictured, a Tokyo phone retailer forced to wait in the queue because of DoCoMo's restricted launch, believes 3G will become mainstream in the near future. "DoCoMo has strong sales power and brand recognition. If the packet rate for the video service drops by 30 per cent, it will be an instant hit."

Tachikawa says that is the DoCoMo plan. As demand spreads beyond the corporate sector, prices will fall, bringing the 3G system within the reach of the average Japanese. Even then, DoCoMo is not expecting a profit for four years as the subscriber base builds to sixmillion. The second generation system is not likely to be phased out until the end of the decade.

The big worry, say Tokyo experts, is that outsiders will automatically assume the new mobile phones will be a global hit if they take off in Japan. "Don't forget this is a mutant market," warns Tim Clark, Japan strategist for Internet advisory firm Ion Global, pointing to the unique factors that have made Japan a mobile phone phenomenon.

"I think the jury is still out on whether many of these new applications will take off," he says.

"Having said that, I don't underestimate the ability of the Japanese consumers to react in some tribal way, further enriching DoCoMo's profits."

Michael Millett is The Age Japan correspondent.