NTT DoCoMo Tests Super-Fast Wireless Data
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Over the next month, NTT DoCoMo plans to test a Super 3G, or LTE (long-term evolution) cellular system capable of sending data at 300MBps.
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Wireless computer networks could soon be running 10 times faster than they do now.
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High-speed Wi-Fi Internet access has been tested successfully on the BART subway in the Bay Area.
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Wireless carriers already are thinking ahead to even bigger and speedier networks than the current 3G systems being deployed worldwide. A new standard called "Super 3G," supported by dozens of the world's biggest carriers, could be 10 times faster than the current fastest mobile networks.
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NTT DoCoMo, Japan&#39;s biggest mobile communications carrier, achieved a 1Gbps packet transmission speed using 4G) mobile communication equipment in August, the company has said.
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Chip maker will being testing the emerging, high-speed wireless technology.
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A startup says it can give subway riders wireless Internet access that's faster than most home broadband in the U.S.
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It&#39;s easy to be wowed by Japan&#39;s mobile communications infrastructure. &quot;Next-generation&quot; 3G coverage is now so ubiquitous that carriers have already stopped launching 2G phones; an impressive array of attractive handsets offer free digital TV; phones can be used to pay for goods and train rides, thanks to embedded contactless smart cards; and on the mobile information superhighway data whizzes along at 3.6Mbps. But watch out for the off-ramps.While Japan has led the world with many of the services offered to consumers, in some ways the mobile ecosystem here is downright backward as I found out last weekend when I tried to buy a new phone. A broken handset necessitated a new model and this is where my story begins.In Japan, phones are sold by carriers and not the phone makers. Companies like Fujitsu, NEC, Sony Ericsson, and a few foreign vendors including Nokia, Samsung, and LG sell their phones in the thousands to carriers. This gives carriers the ability to pretty much dictate to the phone maker what software needs to be installed.This model is one of the reasons that mobile Internet services like I-mode took off here so quickly. There was no chicken-and-egg situation with phone makers and users waiting for each other to take the plunge. NTT DoCoMo decided I-mode would be in new phones and so it was.But this model has a downside. Phones are so tightly customized to each carrier that it&#39;s not practical to keep the same handset when switching carriers, and if you see a phone you like you can only buy it if it&#39;s offered by your carrier.Back to my story. The new phone was looking quite expensive so I decided to switch carriers and take advantage of a free phone on a competitor network. Japan launched number portability a year ago, so I could make the jump without losing my cell-phone number. I&#39;d still have the hassle of a new e-mail address, but it appeared a small price to pay.Before long I had a new phone in my hands, but my phone numbers remained locked in the old handset. The new carrier didn&#39;t have a cable to hook up to my old phone so they couldn&#39;t transfer the address book and it wasn&#39;t possible to beam it between the phones. While my old carrier was gung-ho on Bluetooth, my new carrier wasn&#39;t so enthusiastic, so the new phone had no support. Similarly, while the new phone offered infrared, the old phone didn&#39;t. Heavy customization strikes again.Back home I fired up my PC and managed to get my address book from the old phone into the computer. Getting it to the new phone via a memory card seemed like an easy task ... but no! The VCard file wasn&#39;t being properly read by the new phone. Carriers, it was explained to me when I called the help line, often used custom fields in their VCards so there were sometimes problems. So much for a common standard.I won&#39;t bore you with the technicalities of how I eventually got my address book into my new phone, but suffice to say this story has a happy ending. I&#39;m now back in cruise control, enjoying all the attractions the mobile superhighway has to offer.The number portability system that enabled me to keep my phone number is coincidentally one-year-old this week. About 3 percent of users in Japan -- roughly 3.7 million people -- have made use of the system during its first year -- far less than the industry predicted, or feared.One thing that&#39;s said to be stopping users from switching is the inability to keep their e-mail addresses. While carriers fussed over the details of keeping numbers, they forgot, or perhaps ignored, the need to carry e-mail addresses between carriers. In other countries this wouldn&#39;t be a big deal because most messaging is done via SMS, which relies on phone numbers, but in Japan the advanced stage of the market has again caused hassle for consumers.
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New 'Turbo-3G' HSPA mobile services from AT&T Wireless and 3 Sweden feature fast upload speeds.
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NTT DoCoMo used its proprietary signal separation technique to enable data transmission at 1 Gbps in rea ltime using a bandwidth of 100 MHz in an area with low radio signal receptivity.
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Amimon gets its chips out for wireless high dev
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Japan's NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) has launched a Wi-Fi/cellular phone that telecom industry analysts say is the first of its kind.
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The future of wireless looks to be a showdown in wireless 1Gbps (1 gigabit per second) technologyâjust weeks after Siemens announced it was working on technology to transmit 1Gbps wirelessly, NTT DoCoMo announces the same thing.
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A consortium of companies is pushing a new proposal to the IEEE for 802.11n. 135 Mbps in standard mode, 540 Mbps maximum throughput. Fast enough? ...
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Verizon Wireless is bringing its fastest broadband wireless data service -- with triple the capacity its rivals offer -- to metropolitan Boston and the Providence, Hartford, and New Haven areas, beginning today.
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Japan&#39;s top mobile carrier has begun marketing a cell phone that can make Internet calls over Wi-Fi wireless networks in addition to regular ones.
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(InfoWorld) - It's been a year since a Mobile WiMax service was launched in Seoul and one of the world's most wired cities became one of the most wireless. The service is based on WiBro, a South Korean system that has become a part of the 802.16e Mobile WiMax standard. Whereas Mobile WiMax encompasses three frequency bands and several signal bandwidths, WiBro covers a subset of these and is limited to 2.3GHz and an 8.75MHz bandwidth per channel. To mark the launch of its WiBro service last year, KT Corp., the former state-run telecom carrier, took journalists on a trip around Seoul to try out the service in a WiMax-equipped bus. The reporters came away impressed, able to watch Internet video streaming while surfing the Web and video conferencing all while driving down the street. But what's the reality a year later? Last week I returned to Seoul to test the service again, this time outside the controlled environment of a promotional bus ride. Seoul is among the first cities in the world to have Mobile WiMax, so the results provide an indication of what the rest of the world can look forward to in the future. I accessed the service while on the subway, in a bus, and sitting in a coffee shop, and the results were as impressive as they were in last year's staged demonstration. This was especially true on the subway. Riding the number 2 line from Samseong Station to City Hall, the journey has both underground and overground sections. It connects the Teheran Valley high-tech district in the south, crosses the Han River and ends in the heart of Seoul's business and media district. Throughout the 30-minute journey I did not lose the signal once, although the speed did fluctuate somewhat. It would often drop when the train moved out of a station and increase again when it arrived at the next stop. Web and e-mail access worked so well that I decided to try something a little more demanding and accessed streaming video news clips from the Yahoo Japan portal. The clips are encoded at 300k bps (bits per second) and played without any problem, even while the train was in motion. Equally surprising was that my little experiment did not draw the attention of the passengers sitting next to me. In a country where most high-end cell phones have TV reception, watching streaming video on the train doesn't seem to impress anybody! I also accessed an FTP site in the U.S. from the train and started to download a 40M-byte video file. The software indicated a download speed of up to 660k bps in stations, and about 320k bps when the train was in motion. Access from a bus produced much the same results, and while surfing from a coffee shop I enjoyed a connection that hit those same top speeds and remained stable. Technically the WiBro service appears a success, at least if the results of my small trial are anything to go by, so it's a surprise that it has attracted less than 10,000 users in its first year of service. The service costs a flat fee of 16,000 won (US$17.60) per month for unlimited use during the current trial period, and KT even throws in a WiBro adapter, which plugs into laptops via the USB port. So what's holding people back? Until now a limited number of WiBro adapters has been available. said Yeom Woojong, a spokesman for KT in Seoul. But now more companies are offering them, he said, and KT expects to attract more subscribers as the year goes on. At the start of the year it set a target to have 200,000 WiBro users by the end of 2007, and it's sticking to that number, Yeom said. Â