VIDEO INTERVIEW: Japan’s NTT Docomo is planning major upgrades to its 4G network long before it becomes one of the world’s first 5G providers, aiming to launch theoretical peak download speeds of 300Mb/s this year followed by the launch of TD-LTE networks in 2016.

The operator, the country’s leading mobile player with a 38 per cent market share, has offered peak speeds of 225Mb/s since introducing carrier aggregation and category six devices in March, Docomo CTO Seizo Onoe told Mobile World Live.

“But in some cases we can provide 262.5Mb/s by expanding the bandwidth more in some places,” he claimed.

Around half of its 63 million mobile subscribers are on LTE, with the vast majority of data moving over its LTE network, Onoe said. “Today 94 per cent of data traffic is generated through LTE, with only a few areas on 3G, so we are now shifting resources from 3G to LTE dynamically.”

Later this year it aims to boost LTE speeds to 300Mb/s by introducing three carrier aggregation, he said.

Docomo, whose 4G network runs on FDD technology, recently acquired unpaired TDD spectrum – 40MHz in the 3.5GHz band — and plans to launch TD-LTE service next year.

The 40MHz of TDD spectrum, he said, will enable it to introduce three carrier aggregation using two TDD carriers and one FDD carrier and achieve peak speeds of 370Mb/s in the beginning.

To hear more, including which services are proving most popular over 4G, watch the full interview here.