Livedoor Co. will apply for a 2 gigahertz band in a bid to offer high-speed wireless data service, the company said Friday.
The Internet portal operator's decision will intensify the competition for the upcoming allocation as the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry plans to grant the band to only one new entrant by the end of the year.
IPMobile Inc., a Tokyo-based cellular phone service venture, and several other companies have already said they will apply. IPMobile has said it wants to use the band to offer mobile broadband services.
Livedoor said it would use Kyocera Corp.'s iBurst technology with the 2 GHz band to provide public-use, wireless local area network service.
In June, the company announced a plan to launch an inexpensive wireless LAN service later this month for high-speed Internet connections for laptop computers.
The service initially will be offered in a few locations in Tokyo in late July at a fixed fee of 525 yen per month, Livedoor said.
It will launch the nationwide service in 2006 if it gets the license from the ministry and hopes to attract 1 million users, the firm said.
The communications ministry also plans to allocate 1.7 GHz bands to one or two companies, preferably new entrants. Internet investor Softbank Corp. and eAccess Ltd., a broadband access provider, have said they would apply for the spectrum and appear certain to be selected.