NTT DoCoMo plans to cover 60% of households with its ISDB-tmm mobile multimedia broadcasting network when the service goes live next year.
Japan’s leading operator also plans to hit almost 100% coverage within four years of launching the service, and to have 50 million compatible handsets in the market within five years.
Already, some 32.9 million of its customers are using handsets compatible with One-Seg, the technology's predecessor, and 1.5 million subscribe to its mobile-optimized content service BeeTV.
Japanese regulators in September last year selected ISDB-Tmm over the competing MediaFLO-based solution being pushed by rival KDDI as the official standard for next-generation mobile TV.
DoCoMo claims the technology is advantageous because it allows terrestrial broadcasters to share receivers with ISDB-T systems which broadcast primarily to televisions.
ISDB-Tmm also supports file-casting, allowing users to download content at their convenience or in non-peak hours.
To date 12 nations including Japan and the Philippines have adopted the broadcasting standard, while Thailand is assessing it.