DoCoMo's 3G service set for May 2001 launch
totaltele.com
05 December 2000
NTT DoCoMo is on course to launch its W-CDMA network services, branded Foma (Freedom of Mobile multimedia Access), by the end of May 2001, with data rates of 384 kilobits per second downstream.
Akira Hiroike, executive engineer, global standardization, at DoCoMo's research and development planning department, told Total Telecom at the ITU's Telecom Asia 2000 show in Hong Kong he was "very confident that there will be sufficient W-CDMA terminals available at the time of launch. We have been working with a number of vendors on the supply of very attractive, functional terminals," and it was this multi-vendor strategy that made handset availability possible by launch date, "though not all the vendors will be ready by the end of May," added Hiroike.
He confirmed that downlink speeds of 384Kbps would be available from day one, compared with the current 9.6Kbps available to DoCoMo's current i-mode users for their mobile Internet access. Uplink speeds will be 64Kbps initially, "and some corporate users may find this inadequate, though it should be more than sufficient for most," said Hiroike.
Voice service will also be greatly improved. "Voice quality will be superb, and only a very small bit-rate will be needed for that. It will be almost as good as fixed voice [quality]."
He added that these initial downlink speeds would be greater than the 144Kbps that will be available via rival Japanese mobile operator KDDI's CDMA2000 3G service.
Hiroike is very confident that DoCoMo's 3G services will be greeted with enthusiasm by Japanese users, who reacted so enthusiastically to the i-mode mobile Internet services. "We did not realize i-mode would be such a hit. We did not predict the success of non-voice services. This makes us very confident of success with our 3G services." |
