Godzilla-like Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo has reared up from Tokyo bay to offer it’s customers wireless telecoms connectivity for their mobile handsets via their home broadband.

DoCoMo FOMA handsets which have WiFi connectivity will be able to utilise a new service called Home U which allows them to make their normal telephone connections via their home broadband rather than the cellular network. This will allow for free calls between Home U user when they are in their own residence. It will also allow handsets to download large volumes of data such as video at up to 54Mbps - this is a limitation of the WiFi technology, in fiber to the home areas, the actual speed of Japanese broadband is often 100Mbps.

gigaom.com carries word that the big global Telcos such as AT&T, British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, NTT etc could be working together to create a ‘Skype rival’ for 2009.

No real detail or grit is given on the product although I would hope that it would be a SIP or at least standards-based system unlike Skype which is uses a proprietary method.

The service is said to be designed to ultimately be available for mobile devices with 3G or 4G connections so presumably the model would be direct connection or client/server connection rather than Skype’s P2P routing model.

Some more detail over in Om Malik’s article.