This high profile Japanese operator has been instrumental in the development of new mobile technologies, especially the 3G global standard called UMTS.

Japan is one of the few countries where GSM is not supported (Korea being another notable exception). Their 2G system, called PDC, adopted many GSM elements but uses a different RF interface. UMTS 3G phones do work in Japan, but only with SoftBank (formerly Vodafone KK), who operate a 3G network using the global UMTS standard at the common 2100MHz frequency.

NTT DoCoMo pioneered the 3G UMTS standard and launched an early variant, called FOMA, which operates at 1500MHz.

The network serves over 50 million customers, of which over 40 million are 3G enabled.

Regulatory Issues

The Japanese market is constrained by regulations which require any cellsite to be installed and maintained only by qualified personel. This leads to the strange situation where any householder cannot even switch the unit on and off without a visit from a technician. Operators are said to be lobbying hard for a change in the law to enable rollout of femtocells.

Initial Launch in 2007

NTT DoCoMo's original femtocell was developed and supplied by Mitsubishi, presumably to meet their specific requirements. It is likely this is compatible with FOMA phones rather than global compatible UMTS models. There was very little publicity about this product, suggesting that this is really more of a trial than high volume commercial launch. The specifications are similar to other models, with data rates of 3.6Mbit/s down and 384k/s up.

This initial service launched in July 2007 but appears to have had little marketing promotion.

Femtocells postponed in favour of dual-mode WiFi service

Meanwhile NTT DoCoMo have more publicly promoted their dual-mode WiFi service, which was re-launched Home U in May 2008. Some commentators suggest that femtocell testing has been continuing and dual-mode WiFi is more ready for commercial service at this stage.

In total, home services were reported to have achieved sales of some 24,000 units by the end of 2008, the vast majority of which are likely to be WiFi based.

Second Version Launch scheduled for late 2009

Announced in July 2009, a second model of the femtocell with much higher data rates of up to 14.4Mbit/s downlink and 5.7Mbit/s uplink. The high uplink speed exceeds what is available on the standard outdoor network, which doesn't yet support HSUPA. The second generation product was targetted to be on sale during Q3 2009, and represents full commercial entry for the femtocell proposition.

Launch Date confirmed as 18 November 2009

The NTT DoCoMo femtocell service is branded "MyArea" and is targeted at both domestic and small businesses went on sale in November. Pricing is very attractive - a one-off US$22 then $10/month. This already low pricing is made even more attractive for the launch by waving the signup fee completely and reducing the ongoing monthly charge to $5. This reduced price offer is valid until end May 2010.

The femtocell supports presence applications, specifically emailing a predefined person when someone enters or leaves the femtocell coverage area. A limited number of Auto-GPS capable handsets support this feature (initially 7 models). This is expected to be used for:

• Automatically emailing parents when their children return home
• Announcing special offers from local shops when in the area (where subscribers have opted-in for such location based services).

As mentioned above, legal restrictions in Japan require the unit to be installed by a technician who must visit and physically turn on the unit. Lead time from order is quoted as an average of 6 weeks to installation.

The unit can support up to 4 simultaneous calls. Users can register up to 10 nominated phones for their femtocell.

More details are reported on the FemtoHub

A picture of DoCoMo's 2nd generation femtocell is shown below:

Specifications:

Transmission Power; 20mW

Concurrent users: 4

Max Data Speed: 14.4Mb/s down, 5.7Mb/s up

Ethernet 100/10 Mbit/s 10BaseT

Size 180 x 135 x 35 mm

Weight 600g

Power <12W

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