Exciting time for WiMAX and LTE in Japan

I am tracking NTT DoCoMo magnum LTE deployment plans in which the operator plans to have 50% of the geography covered with LTE by 2014 and deploying nearly 20,000 macro base stations  [1].
If you recall what UQ President Mr. Takashi Tanakaspan said “We emwill have 50% of the geography covered with WiMAX by 2010 and install some 20,000 Base stations by 2012″. It is remarkable to note that UQ is aggressively deploying WiMAX ahead of NTT with something like 7000 cells sites finished by now and further keeping the momentum by installing one thousand cell sites every month. I perceive a very exciting time in Japan where we will see nationwide deployment of WiMAX and LTE, contending for larger market share in Japan. UQ will complete 50% of the geography by 2010 and has good two years ahead of DoCoMo to take early lead.

Little is known about the performance of commercial LTE networks, however I got the opportunity to talk with some of the folks at Intel WiMAX who were part of UQ deployment and were closely involved in UQ WIMAX project in Japan. I really have some fascinating details to report about the UQ WiMAX and their deployment so far.
UQ differentiates itself from other tier1 mobile operators like NTT, KDDI and Softbank by promoting its services as huge pipe for unlimited internet, faster than HSPA, EV-DO and has MVNO business models as their key differentiators. UQ also introduced different plans for different kinds of consumers. UQ offers its services as low as US$4 (called UQ step) and unlimited internet at US$49.2(UQ Flat). UQ Wi-Fi is free for its user and UQ single day pass costs $6.7. UQ is on way to deploy the nationwide WiMAX and by December 2009 they have deployed 6100 base stations.

Samsung is supplying majority of the Macro Base Stations for UQ project. Hitachi is supplying the ASN-GW and I am told that R6 handover between Samsung and Hitachi is completed by now. The other supplier of base station is NEC and handovers between Samsung and NEC is completed in UQ labs. Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Onkyo, Lenovo and Acer are shipping products based out of Intel. Other suppliers of devices are Modacom, NECAT, IO Data, Oki . Over 95% of the devices in UQ network are dongles and embedded laptops. Samsung is supplying in-building solution in UQ to cover Railways stations (JR 44 Station), Airports ( Haneda, Narita) , Convention center ( Tokyo Big Site, Makuhari, Mess , pacific yokhama ) , hotels and stores. UQ is also using Kyocera based WiMAX/WiMAX repeaters to improve in building coverage [2].

By December 2009, UQ has reported some 63,000 customers. UQ’s President Mr. Takashi Tanaka said that UQ WiMAX is really fast and most of the places they will be offering speeds up to 10 mbps in downlink. Their peak achievable data rates in good radio conditions with category 5 HARQ is over 20 mbps. Network entry and success rates observed nearly 100% in good radio conditions and over 95% in cell edges. Handover latency is in the range of 60-70 ms, which is better than the current 3G networks deployed in Japan. Network connection time is fairly fast and it is in the range of 2 seconds. IP allocation from DHCP servers may take additional 5-10 second and mostly depend on radio conditions. Performance results reported from UQ’s commercial wimax network is very close to what technology promises. It would be really great to test DoCoMo’s LTE systems with UQ’s WiMAX in coming years. UQ president said in 2010 they will enable global roaming with clreawire and yota .
(The views expressed here are my own and does not reflects my company opinion)
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Watch this Video from UQ