Japan unveils first 6G device: defeating USA, China and Korea

6G device by Japan

Japan’s leading telecom giant consortium have successfully demonstrated the first 6G device in the world. This demonstration have outcast countries like USA, China, UK and Korea in 6G race.

The collaboration between DOCOMO, NTT, NEC, and Fujitsu in Japan have jointly created the first-ever 6G device prototype. It can transmit data at a whopping speed of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps), covering more than 300 feet. That’s a 20x faster than the current 5G technology.

Fig: Japan’s 6G device demonstration in indoor and outdoor (Source)

According to source, this demo was done at April 11, 2024. This prototype device operates in the 100 gigahertz (GHz) band for indoors and the 300 GHz band for outdoors.

How did they achieve?

Achieving this groundbreaking success by Japan in 6G device took a lot of time and seemingly effort from various telecom giant with high investment. NTT alone invest around $3.6B in annual R&D annually.

In February 27,2023:

DOCOMO and NTT announced that they will be doing collaboration for 6G trail with international vendor like Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, INC. (DOCOMO) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) announced that they will expand their 6G experimental trials with five world-leading vendors, including with newly added Ericsson and Keysight Technologies, Inc. (Keysight Technologies) as well as existing collaborators Fujitsu, NEC and Nokia.

22 February 2024:

Nokia, SK Telecom (“SKT”), NTT and DOCOMO announced they have joined forces to develop the 6G AI-native air interface (AI-AI), a critical next-generation technology that could greatly boost network performance while increasing energy efficiency. The four companies will show a video demonstration of an AI-AI proof of concept at SKT’s booth at Mobile World Congress. SK Telecom is the leading telecom giant in South Korea having 5G deployment.

The main driving force behind this is the continuous collaboration between NTT and DOCOMO.

They stated “DOCOMO and NTT will continue to conduct trials in collaboration with major global and Japanese vendors as well as overseas telecom operators. They will further expand their partners and promote various initiatives that leverage their respective strengths, to research and develop various mobile communication technologies.

Through these efforts, DOCOMO and NTT aim to accelerate research and development that will contribute to the global standardization and commercialization of 6G.”