NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s dominant communications carrier, is planning to launch commercial LTE services in the second half of 2010, and will invest between $3 – $4 billion (USD) in its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network during the next five years, says Light Reading. DoCoMo intends to launch its LTE service with data-only devices, such as data cards and dongles, initially, and introduce LTE mobile handsets at a later date.
DoCoMo’s president, Ryuji Yamada, told the Global ICT Summit 2009 that the carrier intends to roll out 20,000 base stations that will cover 50 percent of the Japanese population by 2014. DoCoMo is planning to launch commercial LTE services in the second half of 2010, making it among the first to launch the next step in the evolution of mobile access network technology. The Japanese giant was the first to launch commercial 3G services back in 2001.
As it did with 3G, the mobile world is keeping a close eye on DoCoMo’s rollout and service launch, says Light Reading.
Other mobile carriers launching LTE service in the next year include Verizon in the USA, TeliaSonera AB in Sweden and China Mobile using the TD version of LTE.
KDDI, the second largest mobile carrier in Japan, is also rumored to be targeting an early deployment of LTE. KDDI is also rolling out WiMax through its joint venture, UQ Communications.
Softbank Mobile, the third mobile operator in Japan, doesn’t yet have the 20 MHz block of spectrum and believes that a decent selection of devices won’t be available in 2010.
