The telco confirmed it aims to launch 5G technology in 2020
SHANGHAI – Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo expects to reach 15 million subscribers for its “dmarket” service by the end of its fiscal year 2015, the company’s president and CEO Kaoru Kato told reporters during a keynote presentation at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai.
By the end of January this year, NTT DoCoMo’s dmarket service had nearly 10 million subscribers. The service provides NTT DoCoMo’s subscribers access to music, videos, e-books and magazines.
The executive also highlighted the recently signed agreement with General Electric to jointly develop an “Internet of Things” alliance designed to combine the U.S. company’s industrial sector wireless router with the operator’s network. The joint initiative is said to enable real-time analysis of industrial equipment.
Kato also said that the operator is promoting ICT in the agricultural sector, which will allow farmers to monitor and manage a range of environmental factors including water level, temperature and humidity.
Kato reiterated that the telco aims to launch “5G” technology in fiscal year 2020. Earlier this year, NTT DoCoMo launched an updated LTE service dubbed “Premium 4G” with speeds of up to 225 megabits per second, and aims to offer an even faster service in the coming months – a 300 Mbps LTE service during fiscal year 2015, according to previous reports.
NTT DoCoMo also expects to launch a 370 Mbps LTE service tapping spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band during fiscal year 2016, and expects to offer access speeds of 1 gigabit per second during fiscal year 2017 using “MIMO Advanced” among other technologies.
NTT DoCoMo ended March with a total of 97,400 LTE base stations across Japan, compared to 55,300 base stations the previous year. The telco ended fiscal year 2014 with more than 30 million LTE subscribers and targets 37 million subscribers by the end of fiscal 2015.
