Japanese carrier NTT DOCOMO is set to launch LTE commercially in December of this year, Seizo Onoe, SVP and managing director of the R&D strategy department at NTT DOCOMO, told telecoms.com at  LTE World Summit.

“We will launch LTE commercially in December of this year,” Seizo says. “We want to be one of the leading operators in this space and DOCOMO’s policy is now to focus on upgrading technology to 4G” said Seizo, reports telecoms.com.

NTT DOCOMO is deploying new W-CDMA base stations equipped with newly developed remote radio equipment (RRE) units to provide both existing W-CDMA and forthcoming LTE service.

The RRE-equipped base stations will account for about half of the initial LTE base stations when DOCOMO becomes one of world's first operators to launch an LTE service in December 2010.

The deployment is a part of DOCOMO's initial plan to layer a 2GHz LTE network over its existing 3G network to provide dual W-CDMA/LTE service, which will combine the benefits of LTE's high transmission speeds with 3G's wide-area coverage as the LTE network is expanded gradually.