Japan's EMobile Pumps Up Its HSPA+

EMobile Ltd. , Japan's smallest mobile operator, has deployed HSPA+, also known as HSPA Evolved, in the country's major cities, including Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, and Nagoya. (See EMobile Launches HSPA+.)

This deployment is based on equipment from Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), which supplied the core network and core systems integration services as well as the majority of the radio access network. It builds out the geographical coverage for HSPA+ that EMobile has already established using Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. equipment in a number of Japan's other cities, including Hokkaido, Sendai, Niigata, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Nagasaki. (See Huawei, EMobile Launch HSPA+.)

Japan is a market with a reputation for being first with new technology, but HSPA+ has been passed over, most notably by market leader NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NYSE: DCM), which has focused on moving to Long-Term Evolution (LTE) as fast as possible.

The No. 2 player, KDDI Corp. , is similarly pushing toward LTE, although from a CDMA base that takes HSPA out of the equation, while SoftBank Mobile Corp. is known to have run HSPA+ lab trials and has also said it will move to LTE when it gets the necessary spectrum. (See DoCoMo Shells Out on LTE and KDDI Picks Challengers for LTE Deployment.)

EMobile is by far the smallest of Japan's operators, with just 1.67 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter, compared to DoCoMo's 54.86 million, KDDI's 31 million, and Softbank's 20.96 million customers, according to Wireless Intelligence .

However, EMobile positions itself as an access provider, bundling its voice services with data access at low prices. It therefore sees the speed advantage that HSPA+ brings as a clear differentiator that enhances the company's mobile Internet access proposition.

Telstra Corp. Ltd. (ASX: TLS; NZK: TLS) in Australia was the first in the world to offer commercial HSPA+ services. Five other Asian operators now offer the 21-Mbit/s services, while Dialog Telekom in Sri Lanka is trialing HSPA+, and both Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd. (NYSE: CHT) in Taiwan and Telecom New Zealand Ltd. (NYSE: NZT; New Zealand: TEL) have announced plans to launch next year, as shown in the table below. (See Telstra Debuts Fast Mobile Broadband, Telstra Launches HSPA+ Device, StarHub Launches HSPA+, Dialog Talks Up HSPA+, and CSL Launches HSPA+.)

Table 1: HSPA+ Deployments in Asia

Operator	Country	Status	RAN Vendor(s)
Telstra	Australia	Commercial since February 2009	Ericsson
PCCW	Hong Kong	Commercial trials since December 2008; Full launch planned 2H09	Huawei
CSL	Hong Kong	Commercial since March 2009	ZTE
Starhub	Singapore	Commercial since March 2009	Huawei
Emobile	Japan	Commercial since July 2009	Ericsson and Huawei
Dialog	Sri Lanka	Trials since April 2009	Ericsson
Chunghwa	Taiwan	Planned 2010	NSN
Telecom New Zealand	New Zealand	Planned Spring 2010	Alcatel-Lucent
Source: Company information

— Catherine Haslam, Asia Editor, Light Reading