NTT Docomo today said its joint 5G outdoor trial with Ericsson achieved a data transmission speed of over 4.5Gbps using the high-frequency 15GHz spectrum band.

Docomo aims to deploy a commercial 5G network by the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in July 2020.

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In a separate indoor 5G trial with Nokia Networks, Docomo achieved data transmissions of over 2Gbps using higher frequencies in the 70GHz band.

Docomo will also conduct 5G trials with Huawei and Mitsubishi using various frequency bands, including lower than 6GHz and extremely high frequencies, called millimeter waves.

Docomo’s 5G trials encompass eight mobile technology vendors, also including Alcatel-Lucent, Fujitsu, NEC and Samsung.

Details of both high-frequency trials will be presented at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, Spain from March 2 to 5.

Meanwhile, NTT Docomo will conduct a three-way 5G technical collaboration with China Mobile Communications and KT of South Korea to accelerate 5G commercial deployments and drive standardization efforts.

NTT Docomo has developed an application software to instantly switch a mobile phone number stored in an SIM card to another SIM-less tablet or Internet-of-Things (IoT) device with a simple wave, eliminating the need to physically swap a SIM card.

The Android-compatible application software, named Portable SIM App, will connect a master device and a target device to transfer SIM information stored in the master device, such as a phone number and login ID.

NTT Docomo in collaboration with Ericsson, Fujitsu and NEC has started developing plans for a commercial deployment of network functions virtualisation (NFV) technology on Docomo’s network in Japan from March 2016, and ultimately for its entire virtualized network.

Seizo Onoe, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Docomo, said: “Through multi-vendor initiatives with Ericsson, Fujitsu and NEC and other leading vendors in the NFV domain, we look forward to putting NFV to practical use and thereby helping to accelerate the transition to a new era for mobile networks.”

Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com