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DoCoMo's wireless LAN experiment: thin end of wedge?

Although most commentators yesterday focused on Japanese "3G phone provider" DoCoMo and its experiments with fourth generation phones, the significant move by the mobile data pioneer was its decision to run experimental wireless LAN "hot spots" this April.

The phone company announced it wants to recruit 1,000 "monitors" to trial a public wireless LAN service starting April 15, and probably ending on June 30.

This is almost certainly the first public acknowledgement by any 3G phone operator that there is a problem with trying to set up third generation phone networks that don't integrate with wireless LAN services. It could be the thin end of a wedge which will break up the pretence that the two are separate.

Even now, DoCoMo has fought shy of admitting that WLAN can offer phone connectivity using voice over IP. As far as can be discovered, there will be no WiFi phones provided as part of the test.

The announcement by NTT DoCoMo simply said that its WiFi trial service "will use terminals based on the IEEE802.11b standard allowing use of the 2.4GHz frequency band to realize transmission speeds of up to 11Mbps, and offer 'hotspot services' that will enable users to connect to the Internet or to access applications remotely."

The hotspots will be in two Japanese hotels, two convention centres, and three of NTT's own buildings - offices and factories.

Reporting the announcement, 3G Newsroom failed to get at all excited about the breakthrough move, simply repeating NTT DoCoMo's own press release, which said that "one of the objectives of the experiment is to explore the possibility of integrating our third-generation (3G) mobile-phone service, FOMA, with wireless LAN services."

DoCoMo laconically remarked that its entrance into the wireless LAN service market "may impact the direction of the 3G service as well as hotspot service in Japan and the world."

Far more attention was given to the parallel announcement that the corporation would be experimenting with fourth-generation phones, running at 100 Megabits per second.

This experiment, while probably technically very interesting, is of absolutely no commercial interest, since even DoCoMo doesn't anticipate seeing such services launched for another eight to ten years.

Its only significance, probably, will be that it scares people like Vodafone and Hutchison and other UMTS licence-holders into realising that their 3G licences expire pretty soon.