NTT DOCOMO announced that it will commence delivery of trial environments for 5G mobile communications in Japan in 2017, working in conjunction with various partners in industries such as automobiles, railways and broadcasting
The initial 5G Trial Sites will be offered mainly in two districts of Tokyo, the Odaiba waterfront and Tokyo SKYTREE TOWN. The sites will leverage the 5G radio network expertise of Ericsson and Intel's 5G client.
For communications, DOCOMO plans to utilize the 28GHz frequency band, one of the candidate bands that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is considering to designate for commercial 5G networks in Japan.
5G is a much anticipated mobile communications technology that will address the expected explosion in the number of mobile devices and the massive increase in network traffic in the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) era. 5G boasts ultra-high-speed data rates beyond 10Gbps, excess capacity, extra-low latency and greatly expanded connectivity compared to existing mobile communications systems.
DOCOMO expects to expand the scope of the trials later by collaborating with other network engineering firms and chip vendors, and also by utilizing the additional 4.5GHz candidate band.
DOCOMO has been collaborating directly with a number of world-leading vendors since May 2014 to trial and develop 5G technologies.
