Fujitsu Ltd says it will begin field testing a range of multimedia services in partnership with several Japanese cable television companies in December: several thousand subscribers of five cable companies will be offered five types of service over a six-month to one-year period under the pilot trial; services will include what Fujitsu calls near video on demand – movies and popular television programmes delivered over several channels with staggered viewing times, plus games software and a karaoke service, and local community access to the system to transmit speech, data, still or moving photos to residents of each cable viewing area; telephone, facsimile and personal computer communications will also be possible but only between the subscribers of each cable network.
