4G
4G

4G

KDDI Eyes Method for Advanced Mobile

KDDI Corp. intends to maintain the CDMA 2000 method, used for the current 3G mobile service offerings, for voice communications in future advanced mobile services, company officials have said according to JiJi press. For data transmission, however, KDDI plans to adopt the Long Term Evolution, or LTE, technology, an internationally supported method to be compatible with the wideband code division multiple access, or W-CDMA, mobile method now used by its rivals NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile the officials said.

DoCoMo Achieves 250Mbps Downlink

DoCoMo has announced their latest speed trials in the march towards Super 3G or so-called LTE technologies. According to the press release they have refined the experimental system using an actual wireless environment near its R&D labs in Yokosuka Research Park to record a downlink transmission rate of 250Mbps in the 20MHz bandwidth, the maximum under new Super 3G standards. DoCoMo is continuing to test connection handover from one base station to another, and the functionality of applications in indoor and outdoor environments.

HTC Announces Titan II for eMobile

HTC has just confirmed [.pdf in Japanese] the introduction of their HTC TyTN II – or Titan Two – which will become available for sale in Japan on Friday, March 28, 2008 via eMobile, under the product name “S11HT (EMONSTER)”. The HTC TyTN II will be the first device from eMobile supporting broadband voice services and this handset is the eighth model, including designs scheduled for future release, from the HTC lineup to appear in Japan.

NextWave Wireless to Aquire IPMobile

NextWave Wireless announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire all shares of IPMobile held by Mori Trust Co., Ltd., of Japan. Upon closing of the transaction, NextWave will hold a 69.2% stake in IPMobile. The agreement is subject to required government approvals. IPMobile has been working with IPWireless towards a commercial launch of a TD-CDMA wireless broadband network by November of this year. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Toshiba Pushing NAND Memory

Toshiba has announced a new series of embedded NAND Flash memories for mobile phones offering both a configurable single-level cell (SLC) memory area and a multi-level cell (MLC) memory area, allowing applications and data to be stored on the same chip. The five memories in the mobileLBA-NAND series range in capacity from 2- to 32-gigabits(1) (Gb). The 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb versions can be allocated as SLC up to their full capacity, while the 16Gb and 32Gb versions can support up to 8Gb of SLC, offering manufacturers greater flexibility in allocating memory in their products. Samples of mobileLBA-NAND packaged in MCPs will be available from August 2007.

DoCoMo Reports Roaming Glitch

According to this report on Reuters, DoCoMo has said that as many as 240,000 users may not be able to use their phones overseas because of a software glitch. Faulty SIM cards on certain models are apparently preventing connections for messages and voice calls on networks outside Japan. DoCoMo said the glitch and it will replace faulty SIM cards for free.

Japan Mobile Industry News Mash-up

It’s been a rather hectic few weeks here, as mentioned at the end of our latest WWJ Newsletter, so we thought a chocolate covered bundle of tidbits would be in order today. With 3GSM running this week in Barcelona, on top of the usual post January speed cycle, we’ve clipped over a dozen highlights together for a sweetheart ‘Valentines Eve’ post chalk full of wireless news goodies collected over the last little while, just for you after the jump.

DoCoMo Achieves 5Gbps Data Speed

NTT DoCoMo just announced it has achieved a maximum packet transmission rate of approximately 5Gbps in the downlink – claiming a World’s First – using 100MHz frequency bandwidth to a mobile station moving at 10kmh. The field experiment 4G radio access took place in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture on December 25, 2006. After having achieved a maximum speed of 2.5Gbps in December 2005, DoCoMo doubled the speed in the more recent test by increasing the number of MIMO transmitting and receiving antennas from six to 12 each, and by using proprietary received signal processing technology.

Japan's Mobile Year in Review

It was the best of times, it was… well, it really was the best of times! Also, as the famous line from Dickens goes, it was the age of wisdom, the age of foolishness and the season of.. Mobile!

Looking back on 2006, it’s hard to decide which news from Japan’s mobile scene was the most spectacular. Vodafone pulled out, Softbank stood up, mobile number portability struck, a record number of new handsets hit the street and – as December winds down – Motorola and Samsung are shipping first foreign-made 3G units into Japan.

A ‘quick’ look at what caught WWJ’s attention in ’06 after the jump.

World First 8GB SDHC Memory Card

Toshiba announced the global launch of the latest addition to its new series of high-capacity SDHC Memory Cards: the industry’s first 8-gigabyte Class 4 memory card. The new card will be introduced in early January 2007, alongside the 4GB products launched in September, and will give Toshiba a larger commercially available lineup in high performance SD Memory Cards. The SDHC (SD High Capacity) Memory Card is based on the SD Card Association’s SD Specifications Ver2.00, which defines high capacity, high performance enhancements to market-leading SD Memory Cards. The new card meets the Class 4 standard, a speed standard that requires a data write speed of at least 4GB/second. Toshiba is first in the industry to announce the launch of Class 4 8GB SDHC memory card.