Japan continued to be lucrative territory for Ericsson, with NTT Docomo picking the vendor to provide RAN baseband platform spanning all generations of its mobile infrastructure.

Ericsson stated what it calls RAN Compute equipment works across 4G, and normal and advanced iterations of 5G. It explained the platform can be foundational in creation of AI-native networks.

The vendor noted the platform expands capacity by up to two times over its previous-generation of equipment. Energy use is “less than half”, elements Ericsson pitched as helping to reduce costs in centralised RAN set-ups.

Ericsson noted the work with Docomo adds to the rollout of Massive MIMO equipment with the operator in December 2025.

Over the course of 2026, it has added contracts with SoftBank Corp and KDDI, among other moves in Japan.

Docomo GM of RAN design department Masafumi Masuda said Ericsson is enhancing the “processing capacity” of the operator’s network, an upgrade needed to “improve communication quality while meeting” rising “traffic demand”.

Yukiko Sato, board director and head of the NTT Group customer unit at Ericsson Japan, said the RAN baseband platform would also “enhance environmental sustainability and reduce operating costs”.

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