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NTT Docomo Inc has announced that from May or later in 2017, it will commence delivery of trial environments for 5G mobile communications in Japan, working in conjunction with various partners in industries such as automobiles, railways and broadcasting.
The 5G trial sites, which will enable customers to experience services and content leveraging 5G technology, will be the latest step toward a commercial 5G system that Docomo expects to launch in 2020.
The initial sites will be offered mainly in two districts of Tokyo, the Odaiba waterfront and Tokyo Skytree Town. The sites will leverage the 5G radio network expertise of Ericsson and the 5G client leadership of Intel, the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer. For communications, Docomo plans to utilize the 28GHz frequency band, one of the candidate bands that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is considering to designate for commercial 5G networks in Japan.
5G is a much anticipated mobile communications technology that will address the expected explosion in the number of mobile devices and the massive increase in network traffic in the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) era. 5G boasts ultra-high-speed data rates beyond 10Gbps, excess capacity, extra-low latency and greatly expanded connectivity compared to existing mobile communications systems.
Docomo said it expects to expand the scope of the trials later by collaborating with other network engineering firms and chip vendors, and also by utilizing the additional 4.5GHz candidate band.
Docomo will provide an overview of the 5G trial sites during Docomo R&D Open House 2016, which will take place at the Docomo R&D Center in the Yokosuka Research Park near Yokohama on November 17 and 18.
© Japan Today
10 Comments
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afanofjapan
Meanwhile, has anyone actually ever gotten even one 10th of the advertised 150mbps. I think if they relieved congestion before working on making it go faster, we would all be happy
Strangerland
You will never get that. They don't advertise that as a speed, they advertise it as a capacity (though you'd have to read the small print to understand). There is no way to rate actual speeds - they depend on the amount of traffic at any given time, the speed of the servers, the quality of the connection on the receiving end, the receiving hardware etc. It's impossible to give any number that would accurately reflect actual speeds.
As such, the only thing they can do is rate capacity. The speed at which a transfer could take place, with zero bottlenecks, on a perfect connection. This gives a standard by which speeds can be compared. While you will not get 150mb/s on a line that has that capacity, you will almost definitely get around double the speeds you would get on a line with 75mb/s capacity.
GaikokuJim
Come up with 5g for what? To only have a 7gb allowance? At this point we only need lower prices and unlimited access, not higher speeds. How about introducing cheaper plans and such options as "Data only"?
Strangerland
Where did they say it would only be a 7gb allowance?
A.N. Other
Quit defending these telecommunications companies. Their marketing is deliberately designed to mislead.
Give me a 3G service supported by an adequate back end than any new-fangled nG service which looks impressive only on paper.
kurisu77
I am not sure that most users need that much speed. Except heavy downloaders I don't think that 10Gbps is necessary. Most users surfs, checks mail, that's all.
afanofjapan
Of course i am not expecting 150mbps, its even 375mbps now, but either way you could be forgiven for thinking you might get some pretty impressive speeds off these claims of capacity. I have friends in the US and in Australia with screenshots up 100mbps download speeds on their phones (admittedly only in certain spots and at certain times), but i have never ever seen anything above 20mbps here in Japan.
When i switched from 3G (with a theoretical max of 14mbps i think?) to 100mbps LTE with Docomo. I actually went DOWN in speed. I checked speedtest.net before, and directly after, with only a 10-15 minute time difference. I never had a "wow this is much faster" moment.
Now i am with an MVNO, i accept that i wont get quite the same speeds (particularly between 12-1pm and 7-9pm), but i pay a quarter of the price of the big 3, and its enough to watch youtube so i am not so fussed...
Seapig
@afanofjapan: since you mentioned speedtest.net, and I have the app installed on my iPhone, I decided to check it as I ride the bus to meet a friend. Carries is Docomo and the download speed was 52.63. I've seen faster but that's not bad...
afanofjapan
Well that is impressive. I never got anything close to that.