Great news for all the phonephiles who have been suffering with substandard phones that providers eventually decide to expel onto the US market: Japan's DoCoMo is transitioning its entire line of phones to the GSM standard, which is used by Cingular and T-Mobile in the US.

Right now, only a limited number of Japanese phones are compatible with US providers. But after the switch, any phone on DoCoMo's network can most likely be used, with little change, on the US provider networks.

In addition, after converting to the GSM standard, travelling Japanese DoCoMo users will be able to use the i-mode internet services in over 70 countries.

DoCoMo to make all models global standard - paper [Reuters]

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