DoCoMo needs terminals for 2010 LTE launch
Comment: Coordinating the availability of new network and new terminals is always one of the biggest challenges of a generation change in the mobile industry. In the early 1990s GSM stood for “God send mobiles”, wags joked. When 3G was new early this decade, handsets were large and had poor battery life. If the industry is not careful, the next generation will see a similar story.
NTT DoCoMo is planning to launch LTE services by the end of 2010, though the Japanese operator believes that it is unlikely there will be many terminals available until 2011.
The company aims to cover 50% of the Japanese population with LTE by the end of 2015, using 20,000 new base stations, mainly built as additions to current 3G base stations.
But the company is already preparing plans for the next phase, called LTE Advanced, which should allow download speeds of up to one gigabit a second, Dr Atsushi Murase, managing director of NTT DoCoMo’s research labs, told a conference in Hong Kong.
NTT DoCoMo is unwilling to use the term 4G for the first implementation of LTE, preferring to keep the term for LTE Advanced, which will be installed from 2012 or 2013 onwards.
The one gigabit speed will apply only to “low mobility” terminals, Murase told the conference, organized by Huawei for CTOs from mobile operators worldwide. For “high mobility terminals the normal maximum speed will be 100 megabits, he added.
LTE will be reserved for data services only when NTT DoCoMo launches it in late 2010, Murase explained. It will be a “soft-running type of launch” because of the lack of availability of terminals.
He expects handsets to become available from 2011 onwards: DoCoMo is working with a number of terminal makers, including Fujitsu, NEC and Panasonic, he said.
However DoCoMo is concerned about the slow global rollout of LTE, which could affect the success of its own business. “We need to have other LTE operators, to ensure interoperability,” he said in Hong Kong.
He also recalled a two-year gap in progress because of the lack of handsets after DoCoMo launched the world’s first 3G network in October 2001. “It was idling time,” he said. But now Japan has 100 million 3G subscribers — an 85% market penetration. “Most subscribers now have 3G in Japan.”
He expects the international mobile standards body 3GPP to issue the standard for LTE Advanced by early 2011, allowing vendors and operators to work on interoperability of systems.
Murase was in no doubt about the eventual success of LTE Advanced, because of the continuing demand for faster and faster wireless broadband. GTB