Japanese companies love a good partnership, so it's not much of a surprise to hear that NEC, Docomo, Panasonic Mobile, and Fujitsu are working together on some new cellular modem technology. What is surprising is that their single chip can handle GSM, WCDMA, HSPA+, and LTE. Testing of the new technology for compatibility with major network vendors' equipment finished today, meaning that chips using the new tech should be in the pipeline shortly.

Ordinarily, the LTE modem would need to be separate, and by getting everything together, the companies claim they can get a maximum of 20 percent better power efficiency during transmission and in standby. The chip can handle LTE transmissions with both frequency division duplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD), meaning it's international, and the consortium is looking to sell both in Japan and abroad. If that isn't enough, NEC also notes that the companies are looking toward LTE-Advanced, meaning we can probably expect something even better from them in the future.