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Vodafone tests high-speed wireless technology in Tokyo
By Martyn Williams

Vodafone KK, the Japanese unit of Vodafone Group Plc, began trials in Tokyo on Monday of a technology that could be used to upgrade its 3G network to offer multi-megabit per second data transmission. It will be one of the first such trials of the technology anywhere in the world.

The company will trial the technology, called HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access), for about four months, said Matthew Nicholson, a spokesman for Vodafone in Tokyo. The trial, a license for which was received from the Japanese government on Monday, will use equipment from Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, he said.

HSDPA is an upgrade to the existing WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) technology that allows data to be transmitted at speeds several times faster than the 384k bps (bits per second) currently available.

Several carriers around the world are looking at HSDPA. Most of them talk of an upgrade path that will initially bump transmission speeds to around 3M bps, and later to about 14M bps.

Among them, Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc. has said it plans to offer commercial service by the end of March 2006, while in Europe the U.K. operator mmO2 PLC recently announced plans to offer HSDPA services, first on the Isle of Mann and then on the British mainland. Cingular Wireless LLC in the U.S. has also talked about offering the upgrade on its 3G network in the future.

Last week Tokyo-based wholesale broadband Internet provider eAccess Ltd. said it hopes to begin tests of HSDPA in April, with a view to applying for a license to operate wireless services when the government offers additional wireless spectrum. Vodafone has also said it plans to test the system in New Zealand.

The technology could be an important tool for carriers in markets such as the U.S. and Japan, where competing operators use different technologies. CDMA2000 1x EvDO, used in both markets, already supports 2.4M bps data transmission and so pushing WCDMA's transmission rate higher will be important if fast data transmission becomes a key selling point.

Other high-speed data technologies also exist, including Flash (fast low-latency access with seamless handoff) OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing), which was developed by New Jersey-based Flarion Technologies Inc. The technology can support data transmission at about 3M bps and Vodafone is also testing that system in Japan.

Posted February 14, 2005 04:23 PM |