Takaaki Sato, NTT DOCOMO
Senior Executive Vice President
Mr. Takaaki Sato is responsible for technologies at NTT DOCOMO, INC. as the Senior Executive Vice President. His responsible areas include R&D, network, devices, procurement, and intellectual property.
Since joining NTT DOCOMO, he had been engaged in establishment of the global standards and development of commercial mobile network for the second-generation PDC, third-generation 3G and fourth-generation LTE systems. In the area of the global standards, he had contributed to advancement of mobile communications on a global scale as one of the original members of 3GPP RAN Working Groups 2 and 3. He also had played a pivotal role in DOCOMO’s successful launch of the world’s first 3G commercial system.
After studying in the U.S. for a year, he had returned to DOCOMO as the leader of the department with the mission to develop technical strategies of the DOCOMO R&D and had been vital in continuing development of DOCOMO’s mobile networks.
As the leader of the Service Design Department, He had served as the central point of coordinating DOCOMO’s service development, creation and operations/maintenance activities for the upstream ISP and ASP layers of mobile networks and had had responsibilities to achieve maximum service value for DOCOMO’s customers and corporate value for the company.
He had extensively worked on creating new value through speech, language, and image AI as well as real-time big data analytics in his role as the General Manager of the Service Innovation Department.
He had contributed to the revitalization of the Hokuriku region for three years as the President of the Hokuriku branch. In particular, he had made significant contributions to increasing mobile payment sales and expanding 5G services by flexibly applying R&D assets to solve on-site challenges. As a result, the Hokuriku branch had achieved the top ranking in national business indicators for three consecutive years.
He majored in traffic engineering at Kyoto University and earned MBA from MIT when he was 42 years old. He has 310 patents in Japan and other countries regarding wireless system control.