eMobile, the Japanese data-centric mobile operator, and its parent company, eAccess, have applied for an LTE field trial license, reports Telecompaper. The operator is reportedly planning to run a trial of the emerging technology from December this year until May 2009 in the Shimbashi area of the Minato ward in Tokyo. The report adds that the companies will then plan to adopt LTE during the first half of 2011. The field-trial will focus on radiowave propagation, throughput, evaluate MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) transmission performance, test applications – including VoIP, streaming and gaming – and conduct multi-cell, multi-user tests, says Telecompaper.

eMobile’s move is the latest in a series of LTE developments in Japan. Market-leader NTT DoCoMo has been one of the strongest proponents of the technology to date, and is expected to be one of the first operators in the world to commercially launch LTE networks. The operator claimed to have achieved downlink speeds of 250Mb/s in a field trial using LTE-based technology earlier this year. Second-placed Japanese operator KDDI – a CDMA operator – has also been linked with a move to LTE.