4G phone tested by Japan and China

Japan and China plan joint experiments on a new generation internet-capable mobile phone for high-speed data transmissions that will work in both countries at far higher speeds than current 3G phones.

Japanese officials said the experiments would being in December and take three years, the Kyodo news service reported. The project would use the internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) and achieve speeds of up to 100Mb per second, comparable to fiber-optic cables and much faster than the current 3G mobile phone maximum of 2.4Mb per second.

The Japan-China project will test the mobile phone for projects such as data content creation about Chinese cities, a Chinese business database and translating technology for Japanese and Chinese languages.

The new bandwidth potentially promises video conferencing, high-resolution movie transmission and high-speed internet access on mobile phones.

Several universities and companies will take part in the initial project stages, including Kyoto University, Beijing University and Fujitsu, the officials said. Japan's NTT DoCoMo is opening a Beijing office, the Japan Times, a Japanese daily reported, in a possible attempt to explore the 4G potential of China.

Japan leads the world in IPv6-related technology, and hopes to make it a global standard.

Staff, CNET Asia