3G BlackBerry comes to Japan

Canadian vendor, Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind the BlackBerry handheld, announced two firsts on Tuesday. Leading Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo will make the first ever BlackBerry available in Japan on September 26 and the device, the BlackBerry 8707h, will also be RIM’s first WCDMA 3G offering.

DoCoMo will make the device available to corporate customers, supported by the BlackBerry Network Service enabling RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Solution to integrate with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise.

The BlackBerry 8707h operates on both WCDMA and GSM/GPRS networks and can be used overseas for both voice and packet data communications.

Although a number of BlackBerry devices are already classed as 3G devices due to EDGE capabilities, the 8707h is the first to support full WCDMA throughput speeds.