Vodafone has announced that it has been licensed by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications to conduct field tests for High-speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) using experimental radio stations.

The HSDPA technology enables fast packet downlink transmissions at speeds up to 14.4Mbps (theoretical maximum). The company aims to technically evaluate HSDPA in a real field environment in order to further commercial implementation.

The field tests began on February 14 in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area using the 2GHz frequency band.