Fans of all things wireless will be pleased to hear that the world's first 4G mobile phone network is on schedule to launch next year regardless of who backs it.
Japan's NTT DoCoMo says it will press ahead with a 2010 launch of 4G or Long-Term Evolution (LTE) services on its own, much as it did with 3G in 2001.
Left isolated
At that time it had expected operators in other countries to join it in pushing W-CDMA as the global 3G standard, an important factor given that Japan had no GSM network and was, thus, isolated in its ability to sell its technology globally.
However, most networks waited and eventually went with CDMA and other variants, leaving the groundbreaking DoCoMo out on a limb with phones that worked almost nowhere else.
No backup
Regardless of that experience, DoCoMo president Ryuji Yamada says he will press on with LTE next year and is confident the world will follow this time.
Speaking of the 2001 flop, Yamada said, "We went first and when we looked behind us there was nobody there."
Movies the key
Key to persuading customers to use 4G services will be convincing them that phones can be the centre of their entertainment lives. To that end, LTE will play a significant role in quickly delivering movies and other media over connections expected to hit 300Mbps.
Your comments (4) Click to add a new comment
optimaximal
July 20th
4. Fingers crossed O2's shabby 3G network is a side-effect of them really gearing up to support 4G!
Bah, who am I kidding...
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madjedi
July 20th
3. Great news in theory. But since in the UK we can't even get reliabe 3G connections and many places cant get even a 2G signal I am not holding my breath! If I could rely on getting a good 3G signal where ever I went in the uk I would be happy!
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jmace86
July 19th
2. I would very much like to see some LTE in the UK.
Someone should get on that... Right now!
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douceange
July 19th
1. that's awesome!
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