NTT DOCOMO, INC.

Tokyo – October 12, 2026 -- KDDI, NTT DOCOMO, SoftBank and Rakuten Mobile signed a memorandum of understanding on September 11, 2026, to jointly study how 5G millimeter-wave base stations can serve customers across operator boundaries. The four carriers announced the agreement on September 16.

Four carriers will test technical feasibility of cross-operator mmWave use

The study will assess whether the usage coverage of 5G millimeter-wave base stations can be expanded among mobile network operators. The companies will also evaluate efficient operational frameworks for implementing such an arrangement.

The work will focus on technologies and approaches related to 5G millimeter-wave base stations, repeaters and other related assets. The operators plan concrete studies on how to make effective use of facilities that have already been deployed.

Tokyo – October 12, 2026 -- NTT DOCOMO, INC. has developed an AI model that delivers accurate predictions from the first day of a new service, and it will test the technology in field trials with digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising businesses in Japan and overseas by March 2027.

The Dual-view Adaptive Retrieval-augmented Tweedie model targets the "cold-start problem." This occurs when AI cannot make reliable predictions or recommendations because historical data is insufficient, for example after a service launch or an expansion into a new field or region. A paper on the model has been accepted for presentation at the 20th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (ACM RecSys 2026).