Press Releases

TOKYO, JAPAN, February 5, 2015 --- NTT DOCOMO, INC., a personalized mobile solutions provider for smarter living, announced today that it successfully completed an outdoor-commercial-environment verification of its Advanced C-RAN, a network that efficiently increases radio capacity and transmission speed, especially in train stations, large-scale commercial facilities and other high-traffic areas, by achieving a 240Mbps downlink using 35MHz bandwidth, on February 3, 2015.

The successful outcome of the verification paves the way for commercial deployment of the technology together with the launch of DOCOMO's LTE-Advanced network in March.

The verification was conducted using category-6 mobile devices capable of download speeds up to 300Mbps in the Yokosuka area of Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, beginning in November 2014. The purpose was to verify performance and optimize the Advanced C-RAN system for commercial deployment.

Advanced C-RAN is a network based on a concept proposed by DOCOMO in 2013 that leverages carrier aggregation (CA) technology to enable users to receive data simultaneously over small cells for localized coverage deployed in congested areas, and macro cells that provide wider area coverage. This benefit, which will provide stress-free communications in high-traffic areas, will be achieved by using small cells that significantly increase throughput and system capacity while maintaining mobility provided by the macro cells.

"Advanced C-RAN represents an important contribution to the evolution of LTE and will be a key technology for the realization of 5G in the future," said Seizo Onoe, DOCOMO's Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.

DOCOMO expects its LTE-Advanced users to enjoy stable, high-speed mobile experiences thanks to greater throughput and unbroken communication even in high-traffic areas.

Going forward, DOCOMO will continue to develop technologies that improve the capacity and throughput of its wireless communications network, the world's most advanced mobile environment.