Japanese operator DOCOMO is set to launch their LTE service, dubbed “Xi”, on the 24th of December. It’s unusual because traditionally the small island nation has always been the first to adopt the latest in networking technologies, launching 3G when European and American mobile phones were only starting to get color screens. Now Sweden, Norway, and soon America and Germany will all be ahead of the game. Peak theoretical speed of Xi should be around 37.5 Mbps, which is faster than the 12 Mbps that Verizon Wireless plans to offer, but slower than the 50+ Mbps that people in Sweden are getting from local operator TeliaSonera. As I’ve said in previous articles, the bugs are being ironed out, and spectrum allocation and reallocation is still taking place in many countries. For LTE to really shine it needs large blocks of spectrum, which is why I’m frankly a little stunned Verizon has promised such slow speeds.
Back to Japan, the first devices that will support Xi is the USB dongle L-02C and then the F-06C, an ExpressCard device. The former set to be available immediately, the latter in April 2011. Speaking about April 2011, that’s the earliest DOCOMO expects to launch voice services on their new network. Kind of a bummer, but when you think about the fact that they’ve planned on spending $3.3 billion over the next 3 or so years to light up a total of 5,000 cell towers with LTE, then you have to feel for them that this upgrade isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do.
In fact, there’s a lot of hype as to what LTE can deliver, when, and for how much. It’s closer than it has ever been to hitting mainstream, but it’s still at least a few years away before you can expect a call from your mother, with her asking how she can set up her “USB fast modem thingy” that came with her new computer.