OREANDA-NEWS. Huawei today announced that it has signed an agreement with NTT DOCOMO, INC., Japan’s largest mobile service provider, to commence field trials of 5G Radio Access Technologies (RAT) associated with new air-interface technologies. The joint trials will be conducted in outdoor environments in both China and Japan, and aim to validate foundational radio access technologies for emerging 5G mobile networks. Huawei’s agreement with DOCOMO highlights the company’s key role in spearheading innovation in the 5G space in collaboration with industry leaders around the world.

Targeted for commercial launch in 2020, 5G networks will transform the mobile industry. With 1,000 times the capacity and 100 times the speed of LTE, 5G will enable unprecedented mass connectivity for 100 billion devices, a key step in realizing the Internet of Things (IoT) and automating vertical industries. With the Olympic and Paralympic Games scheduled to be held in Tokyo in 2020, Japan has been slated as one of the first markets for the rollout of 5G. Towards this effort, Huawei has joined Japan’s Fifth Generation Mobile Communications Promotion Forum (5GMF), a joint project established in September 2014 to create collaboration among industry, academia, and government sectors on 5G planning and implementation.

"NTT DOCOMO is constantly working to advance core technologies that bring the best communication experience to its customers," said Mr. Seizo Onoe, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, NTT DOCOMO. "From this standpoint, we are pleased to extend our innovation partnership with Huawei into the field of 5G. Huawei has demonstrated several breakthroughs in this area. We look forward to achieving breakthroughs related to 5G radio access technologies through joint field trials with Huawei in both China and Japan in the coming months."

Mr. Ryan Ding, Executive Director of the Board and President of Products and Solutions, Huawei, commented, "5G is the cornerstone for building a better connected world and transforming our life and work for decades to come. To make the 5G market a reality, we need a joint effort across the industry and ecosystem. We are pleased to collaborate with DOCOMO from the early stage to create 5G technologies, and I believe that by working together, we can bring many potential benefits of 5G technologies to our customers."

Huawei has been playing a leading role in defining and promoting 5G around the world. It has also announced global plans to invest a minimum of US\$600 million in the research and innovation of 5G technologies by 2018.

Huawei and DOCOMO will collaborate in testing spectrum agnostic air-interface technologies, with a focus on sub-6GHz spectrum. The experimental system will test the new spectrum agnostic RAT in conjunction with Massive MIMO radio and advanced algorithms. These field trials will be conducted over-the-air and to validate end-user data speeds.