A new high-tech suburban Tokyo train has been launched with the promise of a wireless Internet service allowing passengers to surf the Web on the move. The semi-private Tsukuba Express links Akihabara, Tokyo’s discount electronics heartland, with Tsukuba, a campus town 58 kilometers (36 miles) to the north. For now the Wi-Fi wireless Internet service, offered by NTT BP and Intel, is only on trial in the train carriages and five of 20 stations along the line.
The Japanese and Chinese governments have finalized plans to cooperate in developing technology for fourth-generation cellphones, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Wednesday. The report said Japanese and Chinese government representatives will meet in Tokyo on Friday and are expected to sign an agreement to cooperate in research and development of 4G cellphones, which are expected to come into practical use around 2010.
HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) is an enhancement to W-CDMA, a technology that is also referred to as UMTS, the 3G path chosen by most GSM operators around the world. Today, there are already some 75 UMTS networks in operation around the world. Globally, many UMTS operators are planning on the HSDPA upgrade, and operators that have not deployed UMTS yet are likely to go directly to HSDPA. (Ed’s Note: We’ve been following the evolution to next-gen high-speed mobile for at least 18 months now. Google WWJ for more on this topic.)
Japanese telco NEC and Siemens Communications announced that they are assisting Hutchison 3G Ireland in deploying its W-CDMA/UMTS 3G network. The announcement represents the eighth Hutchison 3G network deployment that NEC and Siemens have been involved in. NEC and Siemens are the suppliers of 3G network solutions to Hutchison 3G in Austria, Hong Kong, Italy and the UK as well.
Internet Initiative Japan Inc., IIJ Technology Inc., and Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd., have formed a business alliance for the commercialization of an RFID platform using networks based on international RFID standards called the EPCglobal Network. Through this alliance, the three companies will offer global real-time SCM (supply chain management), which can be put to practical use for intercompany and international logistics.
Ericsson and the Softbank Group said they have succeeded in a trial experiment for seamless handover of circuit-switched voice data using an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) on a 3G mobile network and wireless local area network (WLAN). This live demonstration was executed on a mobile WCDMA 3G network operated in the 1.7-GHz radio band.
