Docomo Outlines LTE Expansion Plans

NTT Docomo reported flat revenue growth for FY 2011 -- sales of 4,240 billion yen, up 0.4% compared to 4,224 billion yen for FY 2011. Income before taxes rose 5%. The company spent much of the last year recovering from the earthquake/tsunami disaster, implementing new disaster preparedness plans, expanding its new LTE networking, and putting in place the fundamentals to transform itself into a personal and enterprise integrated cloud service provider.


Some operational highlights:

The LTE network currently covers approx. 30% of Japan's population. The company is working to expand the footprint to 70% population coverage by March 31, 2013.

As of March 31, Docomo had 2.2 million Xi LTE subscribers, up by 1.1 million in the last 3 months. The company has set a target of 10 million Xi LTE subscriptions by March 31, 2013.

Docomo plans to start offering Xi service using 800 MHz and 1.5 GHz bands in Q3 FY 2012.

Docomo plans to start offering download speeds of up to 112 Mbps using 1.5 GHz band in selected areas within FY 2012.

Approximately 70% of the smartphones in the summer line-up will be Xi-enabled.

Docomo launched "Shabbette Concier" -- a cloud-based voice agent that controls smartphone features and answers questions regarding train schedules, maps, weather, news, wikipedia, etc.

CAPEX for 2012 is estimated at 735 billion yen, up from 726.8 billion yen in FY 2011 due to additional measures being taken to disperse important facilities and the deployment of facilities for personal and business clouds.
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/corporate/ir/library/earnings/index.html