DoCoMo and Verizon on track for LTE

Verizon Wireless said Friday afternoon that it has completed "successful data calls" at its Long Term Evolution (LTE) test sites in Boston and Seattle.

The data transfers were made over the 700 MHz LTE networks in Verizon's first two major city test sites. Boston and Seattle are expected to be the first two cities that will go live commercially with the pre-4G technology early in 2010. Those cities each now have 10 LTE 4G cell sites up and running on the 700 MHz spectrum.

Verizon isn't yet talking about the data connection speeds. "Everything is as the team expected... But because this is a very controlled environment we don't want to put a number out on the market yet," says company spokesman, Jeff Nelson.

This has pretty much been Verizon's stance throughout -- it doesn't want to talk about test numbers that might not have much relevance on the real networks. Tests have shown connections at anything between 50 Mbit/s to 8 Mbit/s.


NTT DoCoMo has been under intense competitive pressure in recent quarters, as the Japanese market saturates and new players enter the game. Its quarterly results showed a 15.1% decline in net profit to ¥147.4bn ($1.56bn), on revenue down 7.3% to ¥1,085 trillion ($11.46bn), even as rival Softbank enjoyed a 41.4% increase in profits on a slight revenue increase.

The main problem for DoCoMo was lower voice revenue amid increased competition and low cost tariffs - from KDDI and Softbank and also new entrant eMobile, which focuses on flat rate data services. The cellcos are engaged in a price war, which has forced all of them, especially Softbank, to launch cost cutting programs.

DoCoMo reiterated plans to launch LTE services next year, though it is pushing the deadline as far as possible - to December 2010 - determined not to have to rely on pre-standard equipment as it did for 3G with its FOMA platform. Its first roll-out will be targeted at PC cards, said CEO Ryuji Yamada, and will be extended to dual-mode 3G/LTE handsets in 2011. By 2014 it plans to provide LTE service to 50% of the population from around 20,000 base stations at a cost of between ¥300bn and ¥400bn ($3.2bn to $4.2bn).

The Japanese service will initially be aimed at PC users, with DoCoMo offering card-type terminals for laptops, said Ryuji Yamada, president and CEO of NTT DoCoMo at a Tokyo news conference. It will be expanded to include handset terminals from 2011, he said. Those terminals will be dual-mode devices that use LTE networks where available and fall back to 3G networks to provide nationwide coverage.

By 2014 the carrier plans to provide LTE service to 50 percent of Japan from around 20,000 base stations.

DoCoMo plans to invest between ¥300 billion and ¥400 billion (US$3.2 billion to $4.2 billion) during the first five years of the roll-out, said Yamada.

NTT DoCoMo was the first carrier in the world to launch a commercial 3G wireless service based on WCDMA but based on its LTE roll-out it will likely be beaten this time around by carriers in other countries.

Verizon Wireless has said it plans to launch a 60Mbps trial LTE service in two U.S. cities in late 2009, to be followed by a commercial service in 2010. European carriers are also getting behind the technology with several tests under way or planned on the continent. TeliaSonera has said it will build a commercial LTE network in Stockholm, Sweden, and in Oslo, Norway.

Attack of the Palm Pre VoIP apps

Voxofon is angling to be the first native VoIP application for the Palm Pre later this year, but a new Web version of Shape Services‘ IM+ can already access the more-familiar Skype.

IM+ for the Palm Pre, spotted today by JkOnTheRun, can be reached by pointing the Pre’s Web browser to s4palm.com. (This actually works on my iPhone as well, but it’s redundant with a native app available.) There, users can call other Skype contacts for free or use pre-paid SkypeOut minutes to reach any mobile phone or landline. Germany-based Shape Services’ IM+ Web app, which works over 3G, GSM or CDMA networks, is free for 10 days and costs $10 for lifetime use thereafter.imforskype

Houston-based Voxofon has a different focus. It doesn’t allow for free calls between users, but positions itself as a way to make cheap international calls. It’s important to note that Palm — and Sprint, for that matter — hasn’t approved the app yet. Chief executive Alexey Goloshubin said Voxofon wanted to get an announcement out now to let people know the company’s working on a solution for Pre owners. The app will be free to download, and rates will start at 1.3 cents per minute.

As with Voxofon’s existing apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry phones, the Pre app would use a local access number to place calls, so it still eats minutes from the carrier. Goloshubin said the Pre’s application interface for programmers doesn’t allow the low-level programming required for pure VoIP. That’s also why a Pre application wouldn’t be able to intercept outgoing local calls from the main dialer and offer Voxofon dialing instead.

As an alternative to local access, Voxofon can use a callback system that comes in handy for travels abroad. It uses a small amount of Web data to ping the receiving line, which can then call back to a local landline that won’t incur charges for incoming calls.

Voxofon doesn’t have any special deal with Palm or Sprint, so there’s no reason we won’t see other VoIP applications coming along, provided Palm approves them. Given the glacial pace at which Palm’s app store is growing, that could still take a long time.