CNN reports that group of 26 companies, including Britain’s Vodafone, Germany’s Siemens, France’s Alcatel and Japan’s NEC and DoCoMo, have agreed to develop an advanced mobile phone standard, called “super 3G”, capable of transmission speeds more than 10 times as fast as the current third-generation (3G) service.
Basic technological specifications will be compiled by 2007 but no date has been set for a commercial launch, a DoCoMo spokesman said. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily said, however, DoCoMo aims to offer the high-speed service as “early” as 2009.
With 30 to 100 mbs (perhaps 3-4 mbps practically), Super 3G would allow video to be played over mobiles with a quality similar to a high-end television.
The unified standard is expected to create demand for cellphones with a large liquid crystal displays for playing games and watching movies, and to help handset makers cut costs through mass production, the paper said.
NTT’s Super 3G may be a re-named “4G” technology that NTT has been developing in the labs for years. DoCoMo wants to lower costs for cellphones because its revenues have been capped by the introduction of flat-rate services and fierce competition (not to mention WiMax).
Cellular companies appear to be getting increased competition from wireline providers in Korea and elsewhere who are adopting WiBro, a Korean flavor of the emerging 802.16e standard. Meanwhile, T-Mobile plans to deploy wireless broadband in the 450MHz band in its home German market, a move that could play into the hands of infrastructure startup Flarion.
Meanwhile, the FCC said it will auction 3G Advanced Wireless Services spectrum in the 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz bands as early as June 2006. Currently used by different federal government agencies, users will have to relocate to other spectrum before it can be auctioned to new commercial users.
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