Partnership stipulates future field trials in Japan
Chinese vendor Huawei has successfully carried out a large-scale field trial of “5G” radio access technologies, which was conducted jointly with Japanese telecom operator NTT DoCoMo.
The trial represents the first large-scale Multi-User MIMO technology test, with a concurrent connectivity of 24 user devices in the macro-cell environment on the sub-6 GHz frequency band.
Huawei said that the joint trial of 5G radio access technologies is a key step toward accelerating 5G standardization and commercialization.
“As the first in the world to succeed with such a large multiuser environment test, this is an important milestone,” Takehiro Nakamura, VP and managing director of NTT DoCoMo’s 5G Laboratory, said. “This is very encouraging as the industry works to commercialize 5G by 2020. Both Huawei and DoCoMo teams have made tremendous efforts. I look forward to even more impressive results when we move to the next phase of field trial in Japan.”
Huawei and the Japanese telco announced a partnership on joint trials of the new air-interface technologies for 5G in March. The current field trials are taking place at a dedicated test site in Chengdu, China, that enables both companies to systematically verify these technologies, including MU-MIMO, F-OFDM and SCMA.
The Chinese ICT firm plans to launch the first 5G pilot networks with its partners in 2018, and aims to contribute to the 5G industry ecosystem to complete interoperability testing in 2019, and commercially launch 5G networks in 2020.
NTT DoCoMo launches VoLTE roaming service in South Korea
In related news, NTT DoComo has launched a voice-over-LTE international roaming service in South Korea. The telco said that a total of nine smartphone brands are compatible with the new service.
The service will be offered between Japan and South Korea, and within South Korea, through a cooperation agreement with Seoul-based KT Corp., one of South Korea’s largest mobile operators.
DoCoMo’s VoLTE roaming service incorporates the S8 Home Routed architecture, which is a method based on 3GPP standards to realize VoLTE roaming.
The Japanese operator confirmed that it expects to launch VoLTE roaming services in additional countries in the future through agreements with local providers.
NTT DoCoMo ended June with 32.61 million LTE subscribers in Japan. By the end of that month, the telco had a total of 106,900 LTE base stations across the country, up from 66,300 base stations the previous year. A total of 62,800 LTE base stations currently support download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second. The company’s Premium 4G service is currently available in the main urban areas, office districts, exhibition centers, sports venues and theme parks. Premium 4G was launched in March and offers download speeds of up to 225 Mbps using LTE-Advanced technology.
The service uses a combination of spectrum in the 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 1.5 GHz, 1.7 GHz and 2 GHz bands.
