NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest cellular operator, is planning a year of tests of IEEE802.16e WiMax wireless broadband technology in Tokyo, it said.
The company applied for a license on Tuesday to carry out the tests, which it hopes will help it verify several things about the technology. They include measuring data transmission speeds in relation to the location of a handset and whether it is moving or not, optimal parameters for base station allocation, the potential for interference with satellite-based services, and how handovers will work between Wimax devices and those on other systems such as HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).
WiMax is a high-speed wireless data transmission technology with benefits that fall between existing wired and cellular technologies. Tests of the technology are already underway in several countries and certification of WiMax equipment has begun.
It's one of a number of new technologies that could soon trump the 384Kbps maximum download speed offered today by NTT DoCoMo's 3G WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) network.
The first of these is HSDPA, an upgrade to the 3G network and which the carrier intends to start rolling out in the July to September quarter this year. HSDPA should push download speeds to about 3.6Mbps in the first version and further upgrades could take this up to 14Mbps.
Beyond HSDPA is "Super 3G," which will offer data transmission rates as high as 100Mbps and could be available in metropolitan areas of Japan by 2008, the company said.
Even further out are 4G services, which NTT DoCoMo is already developing at its research labs outside of Tokyo. In tests at the end of last year the company managed to transmit data at 2.5Gbps to a moving vehicle. Such 4G technology isn't expected to be commercialized until at least 2010.
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