NTT DoCoMo president Ryuji Yamada has said the operator is committed to its ambitious timeframe of launching its LTE network next year and insisted that compatible handsets would be ready in time. In an interview with the Financial Times, Yamada said the operator had learnt its lessons from being among the first to go live with 3G at the turn of the century. “We went first [with 3G] and when we looked behind us there was nobody there. [This time] we don’t want to go first, we want to go in the leading group,” he said. Another major mobile operator in this leading group is expected to be Verizon Wireless, which is planning to begin trials of its new LTE network in the US later this year. Yamada added that the agreement last December on the LTE standard meant that DoCoMo’s new network would be compatible with others that follow. He also outlined a strategy aimed at avoiding the problems of handset compatibility and insufficient coverage, two issues that hampered DoCoMo’s 3G rollout. “This time we want to introduce LTE as an overlay on top of 3G. From 2011 we plan to have handsets that can use either system,” he said.

DoCoMo – Japan’s largest mobile operator – is banking on the network to stimulate ARPU and profitability in its highly saturated domestic market, most notably via mobile video services. “Through LTE, we want to be known as ‘Douga no DoCoMo’,” said Mr Yamada, a slogan that translates as ‘Movie DoCoMo.’ The report notes that DoCoMo launched a service called BeeTV on 1 May that offers videos custom-made for the small screen of a mobile phone, and has signed-up 400,000 paying customers in the first seven weeks. “Those figures would be inconceivable in the normal broadcast market,” Yamada said.