Broadband wireless player ArrayComm Inc. is getting experimental in Japan.

Kyocera Corp. (NYSE: KYO) quietly announced this week that it has acquired a permit from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) to test ArrayComm's iBurst technology.

ArrayComm is clearly still larging it Santa-style because they haven't responded to requests for more information about what the tests will involve yet. But Kyocera says in a statement that it plans to test the "radio transmission and throughput characteristics" and assess the performance of the system at its Yokohama branch.

Kyocera already manufactures iBurst base stations for ArrayComm, but this is the first official test of the ArrayComm technology on home turf (see ArrayComm: Base Station Ahoy!).

ArrayComm already has some live and trial sites in such exotic foreign locales as Australia, South Korea, South Africa, and Montana [ed note: raisin' dental floss?]. (See ArrayComm Goes Live in Oz, KT Trials ArrayComm's i-Burst, ArrayComm Bursts Into Montana, and ArrayComm Bursts into SA.)

The firm's technology uses smart antennas twinned with unpaired spectrum to deliver wireless broadband services that offer download speeds of about 1 Mbit/s (see ArrayComm Has Its Chips). Lately the firm has been talking up the prospect of applying some of its smart antenna technology to WiMax (see ArrayComm Preps WiMax Move).

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung