Japan’s Softbank (formerly Vodafone Japan) setup a trial in 2007 to evaluate the currently available femtocell products, for which all the current vendors participated. They were granted a test licence from the regulator for 6 months of tests. Read the news release .

Commmercial launch is slated for October 2008. One of the key concerns is the regulatory requirement in Japan for all cellsites (including femtocells) to be installed by a trained technician.  Softbank and other Japanese operators are said to be pressing the regulator to relax this restriction and are confident this will be achieved before launch.

Interestingly, the operator is also quoted as saying they have used an IMS femtocell architecture, which is relatively uncommon. Japanese industry has been promoting IMS alongside LTE, the next generation of radio interfaces for mobile phone systems.

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