Ericsson announced today that SOFTBANK MOBILE has selected it to build an LTE RAN in Japan's major cities,. Ericsson is the second big vendor to report LTE network contract this week, yesterday Nokia Siemens Networks 
announced the LTE win to supply, deploy and integrate operator's 4G, FDD LTE network.

The Ericsson network will cover Japan's major cities Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, which together account for 70 percent of the country's total data and voice traffic, company said.

Ericsson will upgrade SOFTBANK MOBILE's packet core network, including systems integration and deployment of an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) solution, and build a new LTE radio access network using RBS 6000 multi-standard base stations.

"During 2012, many new smartphones, notebooks and tablets with LTE capabilities will be launched in Japan. This will lead to a strong increase in consumer demand for higher data speeds and throughput - a demand that SOFTBANK MOBILE will be able to meet thanks to the state-of-the-art LTE network that we will rapidly deploy," said Jan Signell, President of Ericsson Japan.