NTT DOCOMO driving digital transformation in the 5G era – co-create new values with partners, 11th Ludwig Boltzmann Forum 20 February 2019

Hiroshi Nakamura, NTT DOCOMO Inc. Executive Vice-President & CTO, Member of the Board of Directors, Executive General Manager of R&D Innovation Division

Hiroshi Nakamura: NTT DOCOMO driving digital transformation in the 5G era - co-create new values with partners — Hiroshi Nakamura: NTT DOCOMO driving digital transformation in the 5G era – co-create new values with partners

Summary written by Gerhard Fasol

Sharing our future around 202x – 5G is just around the corner in 2020

Driving digital transformation with 5G and AI

The main benefits to be expected from driving the digital transformation forward is (1) new value creation for customers, and (2) resolution of social issues, via drastic improvement of UI/UX, creation of innovative services and productivity improvement. Tools for this transformation are IoT, AI, 5G, AR/VR, and the cloud.

The most important characteristics of 5G enabling new services are:

high speed, high capacity, peak rate to 20Gbs
low latency, transmission delay in radio segment around 1 ms, necessary eg for remote control of equipment
massive device connectivity, concurrent connections up to 1 million (10^6) devices/square kilometer.

5G standardization recommendations can be found here:

M.2083 : IMT Vision – “Framework and overall objectives of the future development of IMT for 2020 and beyond”, Recommendation M.2083-0 (09/2015)

https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-M.2083-0-201509-I/en

5G rollout plan

2019: frequency allocation
September 2019: pre-commercial service (3GPP Rel. 15)
spring 2020: commercial service
2020: Tokyo Olympic / Paralympic Games
202x: 5G extension (3GPP Rel. 16)

5G trials

spectrum

existing bands: UHF bands ex. 800MHz, 2GHz
exploitation of higher frequency bands
- low SHF bands: 3-6 GHz
- high SHF bands: 3-30 GHz
- EHF bands > 30 GHz

5G trials with 13 vendors

Fujitsu, NEC, Ericsson, SAMSUNG, Mitsubishi Electric, NOKIA, Huawei
Key devices / chip sets vendors: Intel, Qualcomm, Mediatek
System solution vendors: Panasonic
Measuring instruments vendors: Keysight Technologies, Rohde & Schwarz

5G communication experiment in the world’s first ultra high-speed mobile environment at 300 km/h in April 2018

Japan’s Shinkansen high-speed trains travel at speeds up to 300 km/h therefore NTT DOCOMO rented a racetrack for experiments of 5G communications at 300 km/h.

New value creation via co-creation with partners

DOCOMO 5G Open Lab (TM)

Since February 2018 NTT DOCOMO operates the DOCOMO 5G Open Partner Program to develop 5G solutions with partners. “DOCOMO 5G Open Labs” have been opened in Tokyo, Yotsuya (April 2018), Osaka (September 2018) and in Okinawa (January 2018), and so far 2,052 companies and organizations have joined from a wide range of industries.

DOCOMO 5G Open Cloud (TM)

DOCOMO 5G Open Cloud links DOCOMO assets, partner assets, public cloud (Amazon AWS and Google) and directly connects with DOCOMO 5G Open Labs in Yotsuya, Osaka and Okinawa.

5G Open Partnership

As of 7 January 2019, DOCOMO has 2052 partners in the 5G Open Partnership from a wide range of industries:

service (24%)
retail and restaurants (21%)
manufacturing (15%)
media (12%)
finance and insurance (5%)
local governments (4%)
construction (4%)
transportation (4%)
infrastructure (3%)
medical (3%)
other (5%)

DOCOMO has created 122 business cases through co-creation with partners. Application areas include:

health disparities
factory, hazardous work
work style reform
regional vitalization
tourism
disaster preparedness
eduction
mobility
sports

Service example (1): remote control of construction equipment to resolve shortage of operators

Operating excavation equipment and bulldozers is highly skilled work, and such work is needed all over Japan. Remote operation from central control rooms would allow a skilled operator to remotely operate equipment at construction sites without needing to travel to these locations saving time. 5Gs high data speed and short latency is necessary for remote operation.

Service example (2) medical examination of pregnant women using next-gen examination vehicle

Service example (3) sports stadium solution – provide new sports viewing experience

Example: 4K public viewing at the ANA Windsurfing World Cup Yokosuka (10-15 May 2018)

TV crews have to carry large amounts of cables and heavy equipment to enable live transmissions. 5G enables high resolution movies and close-ups, for example using drones.

11th Ludwig Boltzmann Forum 20 February 2019

Takaaki Kajita: Neutrino research in Kamioka and the status of Japanese basic science with large research infrastructures

Hiroshi Nakamura: NTT DOCOMO driving digital transformation in the 5G era – co-create new values with partners