NEC Corp. is participating in KDDI Corp.’s field trials of Long Term Evolution (LTE), which is scheduled for commercial operation from 2012. The trial started in October 2010 from an urban area featuring high population density, a wide range of buildings and using a 1.5 GHz band, the same band used in commercial services.

The trial is being conducted in an environment that is similar to commercial service conditions, and includes handover performance testing in an area where a broad spectrum of radio frequency interference occurs during throughput verification of both the uplink and downlink.

KDDI is scheduled to begin commercial LTE services in December 2012 using LTE systems at the 1.5 GHz band and 800 MHz band. Furthermore, the company is planning to expand its broadband mobile telephone area coverage to 96.5 percent by the end of the 2014 fiscal year (March 31, 2015).

NEC, as an official wireless base station vendor, will continue to develop systems based on know-how fostered from these trials and to work closely with KDDI for its LTE commercial services.