Moving to 4G

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- In Japan, even cats and dogs will participate in mobile chic, according to NTT DoCoMo president and chief executive officer Keiji Tachikawa.

To spur development for mobile devices and services, the company that birthed the multi-media mobile experience known as “i-mode” believes that anything moving -- planes, trains, automobiles, people or pets -- is fair game for expanding the communications market. And in a country that created the robotic dog -- Aibo -- it doesn't seem so far-fetched that man's best friend, if lost, would be found using a GPS device that tracks an RF chip implanted in its collar. “The potential demand for mobile services is enormous if services could applied to objects rather than people,” Tachikawa said.

The DoCoMo chief, who was in Taipei Wednesday (November 20, 2002) for the IEEE's GlobeCom 2002 communications conference, used his keynote address to sketch out a world where mobile devices and services are ubiquitous and the promise of future fourth generation (4G) mobile networks enables things only dreamed of today.

To get there, Tachikawa said, industry insiders need to expand their vision of the target market. Using Japan as an example, Tachikawa said its population will likely hit 120 million in 2010, but those people should only be considered one slice of the consuming market for device makers and service providers.

“There will be 100 million automobiles, 60 million motorbikes and bicycles, and 20 million dogs and cats,” Tachikawa said, in addition to tens of millions of other potential products, such as set-top boxes, video disc players, portable PCs, vending machines and purses with radio tags. “When we add them all up, it is about 570 million -- about five times the size of Japan,” he said.

Moving to 4G

Tachikawa also revealed a few details of what NTT DoCoMo thinks 4G networks should do and how they will look.

“We are thinking of using a cellular system because we plan to build it by extending the coverage and mobility of the 3G system,” he said. “On the other hand, in low mobility areas, such as indoors and in hot spots, it may be necessary to introduce a solution that incorporates wireless LAN type technology for data transmission at even higher speed.”

4G systems should offer a peak speed of more than 100Mbits per second in stationary mode, according to Tachikawa, with an average of 20Mbits per second when traveling. Network capacity should be at least 10 times that of 3G systems. That would quicken the download time of a 10-Mbyte file to one second on 4G, from 200 seconds on 3G, he said, enabling high-definition video to stream to phones and create a virtual reality experience on high-resolution handset screens.

Tachikawa also noted that the networks need to be able to handle volatile traffic patterns, such as multiple short-burst transmissions carrying data-heavy multimedia messages from camera phones.

“In short, in the age of 4G, an extremely wide variety of access and networking capability needs to be supported,” Tachikawa said. “The underlying network for 4G must be able to support fast speed and large volume data transmission at a lower cost than today. Therefore, we believe that 4G will probably become an IP-based network,” he said.