TOKYO (AFP) -- Wikipedia already has thousands of people logging on at their homes and offices. In Japan, those looking for instant answers now need look no further than their mobile phones.

A subsidiary of Japanese communications giant NTT on Tuesday launched the Japanese-language service of the wildly popular free online encyclopedia for mobile phones.

With the new service from NTT Resonant Communication, surfers of keywords would receive a hyperlink to a Wikipedia entry.

The page is quickly saved, meaning it can be accessed even without a connection, such as on a train. The service is not restricted to only customers of NTT's mobile telephone operator NTT DoCoMo.

More than 90 percent of Japan's mobile telephone subscribers go each day to the plethora of online sites available.

In a recent survey, more than half of Japanese who use search engines on their mobile telephones said they wanted reference materials of the type of Wikipedia.

Launched in 2001, Wikipedia is written and edited by thousands of anonymous contributors out of the philosophy that everyone should have access to information.

But the site, which has more than five million articles in 250 languages, has also come under criticism for information vandalism.

In one famous case, a former aide to Robert F. Kennedy logged onto Wikipedia to find an article suggesting that he may have been involved in the assassinations of both the former U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and his older brother president John F. Kennedy.