3G LTE matures to 100 Mbps speed — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Nokia, LG, Alcatel-Lucent nearing commercial deployments} 3G LTE matures to 100 Mbps speed

Agilent 3G LTE-tester

18 Nov 2007 at 20:10 GMT Timo Poropudas

Nokia has announced results from the first phase of a trial that the company achieved 100 Mbps data transfer speeds. The trial was conducted by the Long Term Evolution/System Architecture Evolution Trial Initiative (LTSI), which was founded by a variety of infrastructure vendors, handset manufacturers and wireless operators.

According to RCR Wireless News the initiative is slated for three phases: proof of concept, interoperability and trial. Testing and reporting will continue through 2009 with initial deployments planned for 2010. This technology is being standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

LTE received another boost when the board of the GSM Association voted to back the technology as the standard to succeed HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access).

Verizon Wireless and Vodafone Group plc shocked some in the industry when the companies announced they were considering LTE as the 4G evolution path for their respective networks. However, neither company has yet fully committed to the technology.

Many still expect Vodafone partner company and CDMA operator Verizon Wireless to eventually select Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) technology, which stands on the CDMA evolution path, and is often touted as an alternative to LTE technology, which is the WCDMA evolution path.

Alcatel-Lucent and LG Electronics Co. Ltd. also completed LTE test calls using the infrastructure vendor’s protocol and the handset manufacturer’s devices, the companies announced.

The tests reportedly demonstrated “super high-speed data transmissions, validating the expected performance of LTE in the field and were conducted using both single antenna and multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) 2x2 configurations, transmitting over a 10-megahertz channel.”

The tests were carried out by Bell Labs researchers and product development teams in Alcatel-Lucent’s facility in Stuttgart, Germany.