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Japan continues to set the pace for next generation mobile networks, scoring early trials and deployments in all four key technologies - HSPA+ (eMobile), EV-DO Rev B (KDDI), WiMAX (KDDI/UQ) and LTE (NTT DoCoMo and Softbank leading the race). One of the vendors making the most aggressive moves to take advantage of early 4G uptake is Huawei, which has scored several early LTE trials in Europe and has now set up an LTE laboratory in Tokyo, as well as seeing strong growth in WiMAX. Such activities are vital for the Chinese supplier - stealing an early march in 4G will help it to compensate for its lack of incumbent status in 3G in developed markets, and it needs to look beyond its home market, where adoption of advanced services promises to be slow.

Despite rumors of imminent LTE and WiMAX trials in the US, Huawei's main headlines so far have come from Europe, notably its two LTE test sites in Norwegian capital Oslo, with TeliaSonera/Netcom and Telenor. Both these Baltic carriers are important, not so much for their fairly small home markets, but for their expansion plans in eastern Europe and elsewhere, and because they have traditionally been bastions for their local suppliers Ericsson and Nokia Siemens.

But Japan, with its history of jumping the gun on new platforms, may be a larger near term source of real revenue rather than kudos-boosting trials. With this in mind, Huawei has launched its LTE lab in the Japanese capital, which will be an "incubator" for LTE technologies, and a training facility for implementation and commercialization. Huawei's R&D teams will work with Japanese operators to conduct tests on LTE systems before delivery. The firm said its lab will offer "a full suite of the new testing facilities - such as peak throughput, latency, multi-users, QoS, handover, element level management system operation and self-organizing networks".

The most disruptive of the four Japanese cellcos, data-driven eMobile, is boosting its own challenge to the larger operators' services by going live with HSPA+ services, using the latest commercial iteration of the platform, as early as August. This will deliver peak download of 21Mbps - which can be increased to 28.8Mbps and beyond with the future addition of MIMO smart antennas and multiple channels. Many carriers are trialling the 21Mbps capability, the last HSPA version that will not require hardware upgrades (for MIMO), but only a small handful have commercial services, and in limited areas. The main trailblazers have been Telstra in Australia and Mobilkom in Austria, but the real rush of activity will be seen in 2010 and 2011 - AT&T will be one carrier looking to HSPA+ in this timeframe.

eMobile is not just disruptive because of its advanced networks but its flat rate pricing, which is geared almost entirely to dongles, netbooks and other data-hungry devices. The flat rate pricing for its 21Mbps offering will be ¥5,580 ($56) a month. Like Mobilkom, the initial device will be a Huawei dongle, in this case the D31HW, and eMobile will be going head-to-head with Japan's other new superfast data-driven launch, UQ's WiMAX-based service, which is currently going live in key cities. eMobile also plans to start rolling out LTE in September 2010.

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