NTT DOCOMO to collaborate on 5G with 5 top global tech vendors

NEW DELHI: Japan-based telco NTT DOCOMO has entered into individual collaborations with five top global technology vendors—Intel Corporation, Keysight Technologies, Panasonic Corporation, Qualcomm Technologies, and Rohde & Schwarz GmbH, for development of 5G mobile communications.

The company had already collaborated with eight leading vendors—Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Nokia and Samsung—in May 2014 for this.

The envisioned collaborations are expected to include experimental trials of 5G handset chipsets with Intel, measuring instruments with Keysight Technologies and Rohde &Schwarz, multi-frequency-band control units with Panasonic, and trials and innovations on the 5G radio interface with Qualcomm Technologies.

5G is the next-generation mobile communications system that DOCOMO aims to introduce commercially in 2020.

It is being developed for ultra-high-speed data transmissions of over 10Gbps and 1,000 times the capacity of LTE, which will help address the proliferation of connected items in the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), as well as to support the increasingly diverse range of mobile services.

"Global expectations for 5G are growing as we approach the start of the standardization phase," said Seizo Onoe, Executive Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer at DOCOMO.

"We are delighted to form these new collaborations on 5G experimental trials for wider technical areas to establish the 5G ecosystem with additional world-leading global vendors to promote R&D targeted at 5G deployment in 2020," said Onoe.

DOCOMO and its vendor-partners expect to begin technical discussions and various indoor trials at the DOCOMO R&D Center in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture within the current fiscal year ending in March 2016. The trials will expand to outdoor settings thereafter. The key findings and achievements will be shared with global research bodies and at international conferences. Through the collaborations, DOCOMO expects to evaluate and verify its proprietary 5G technologies and thereby accelerate 5G standardization.

"DOCOMO's long history of embracing cutting-edge technologies has blazed many new trails for the mobile industry. We look forward to continuing this trend together with DOCOMO to enable the next generation of mobile services," said Aicha Evans, Intel's Corporate Vice-President and General Manager of the Communication and Devices Group.

"In our solution-business expansion towards 2020 and later, large-capacity and low-latency 5G communication networks will be essential. We are confident that we will accelerate our 5G research and development through this collaboration," said Panasonic Hideyuki Oka, CTO, Managing Officer, AVC Networks Company, Panasonic.

"Qualcomm is pleased to work with DOCOMO to demonstrate the superior performance and scalability of the 5G radio interface. We envision 5G as a unified framework that will meet the diverse and expanded connectivity needs of the future, including extreme mobile broadband, the Internet of Everything and mission-critical services," said Matt Grob, Qualcomm Technologies' EVP and Chief Technology Officer.

"We are delighted to be selected as a collaboration partner of DOCOMO to contribute with our test & measurement expertise to different aspects of 5G technology development. With a strong global footprint for 4G LTE/LTE-Advanced, Rohde & Schwarz is well positioned and committed to continuously accompany the evolution path from 4G to 5G with leading-edge test & measurement solutions," said Roland Steffen, Executive Vice President Test & Measurement of Rohde & Schwarz.