Martyn Williams

North Korea's nascent cellular telephone network, which was launched in the capital city Pyongyang earlier this year, has been extended to major cities nationwide, according to several recent reports.

The Japanese unit of Microsoft Corp. has begun giving away CDs containing a full set of updates for its Windows XP operating system partly in response to prompting from the Japanese government after a recent series of virus and worm attacks.

Japan's number three cellular carrier, J-Phone Co. Ltd., will change its name to Vodafone KK from October this year, the company has announced.

The governments of Japan, China and South Korea have reached basic agreement on the formation of a joint open-source software project that could encompass desktop applications, embedded programs, middleware and operating systems.

A Minnesota teenager who was arrested last week and charged with releasing the W32.Blaster-B Internet worm has spoken of his surprise at being arrested and also said the media has mischaracterized him as a loner and reckless.

Plans for the governments and private sector companies of Japan, South Korea and China to jointly work together on the development of a new operating system to rival Microsoft Corp.'s Windows will be unveiled later this week, according to two Japanese newspaper reports.

NTT DoCoMo Inc. will open a telecommunication research and development laboratory later this year in Beijing, the company said Tuesday.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. (GST) is planning to shift most of its hard-disk media manufacturing from plants in the U.S. and Japan to China within the next three years, it said Wednesday.