Plugging the Gaps for 100% Coverage

As Japan's mobile market leader, a critical responsibility of DoCoMo is to make sure that its services are available anytime, anywhere, especially now that its 3G customer base has swelled to some 34 million, or about two-thirds of the company's 52 million subscribers.

"When you are on the move, whether for business or recreation, or no matter what you are doing or wherever you are going, we want to make sure that we have you covered," says Satoshi Kobayashi of the Radio Access Network Engineering Department.

To get an idea of the magnitude of DoCoMo's commitment to 100% coverage, compare the investments in its 2G and 3G networks. To attain full coverage for the 2G mova network, 17,000 base stations were installed over a 10-year period. For the 3G FOMA network, however, DoCoMo installed 41,600 base stations roughly in just half that time.

Nationwide coverage has been completed for all Japan Railways Group stations, metropolitan subway stations, educational institutes, and major high-rise buildings.

The remaining task today is to plug up any gaps, or seams, between adjacent cells. Whatever a coverage map may show, there will inevitably be odd places where seams occur, resulting in weak reception.

To eliminate these last nooks and crannies, DoCoMo has turned to its customers with the "Tell Us the Signal Conditions of FOMA" service. Introduced in June 2006, this service allows customers to report reception problems and view an online map to check the status of problem areas. After receiving alerts from customers, DoCoMo checks out problems and takes appropriate action, which sometimes includes the repositioning of antennas or installation of new base stations. The following examples are messages received from customers reporting reception problems: "I had been experiencing bad reception in a particular spot when I traveled by bicycle, but after asking them to do something about it, everything is fine." "Two days ago, the reception in my house was improved, which is a great help because I'm pregnant."

"Thanks to the service, we can leverage invaluable feedback from customers to optimize our nationwide 3G coverage," says Kobayashi.

More Speed, More Convenience

Moving ahead, the company is significantly upgrading network speed with High-Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) technologies. Launched last August in Tokyo with a maximum packet download speed of 3.6Mbps, HSDPA dramatically improves the convenience and usefulness of the FOMA network. "Don't forget," exclaims Kobayashi, "many networks operated at a mere 9.6Kbps just 10 years ago!"

HSDPA service was extended to other major cities last October and then became available to 70% of the population in March.

And DoCoMo plans to boost HSDPA download speed in the near future. Although the timing has yet to be fixed, rest assured that DoCoMo will do it speedily!