LTE support intensifies

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By Robin Whittle - Senior Analyst - Technology

In the future, mobile phones will have blazing speeds, biochips and be able to diagnose ailments. Some in the mobile industry favour Long Term Evolution (LTE) as the favourite road to 4G, although WiMAX certainly has a number of supporters. In late November 2007, the GSM Association came out in favour of the LTE standard.

In April 2008 seven telecom vendors, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson announced plans to commit to a framework for predictable and transparent intellectual property licensing rights that would apply to LTE.

Other recent developments in relation to LTE come from NTT DoCoMo, Ericsson, Verizon Wireless and Nortel:

> In 2008 Japan's NTT DoCoMo found that LTE could offer future data speeds of up to 250Mb/s and biochips could be incorporated that would send data about biochemical conditions, such as blood or sweat diagnostics, to health specialists via standard wireless transmission from a mobile phone. DoMoCo has scheduled 2010 as the first roll-out of the technology.

> Ericsson also recently revealed its M700 mobile platform. This is the first commercially available LTE-capable platform with peak data rates of up to 100Mb/s in the downlink and up to 50Mb/s in the uplink.

> AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless are supporting moves to LTE.

> In mid 2008, Nortel also made its choice - offloading its WiMAX business to Alvarion in order to further develop LTE.

> In late November 2007, the GSM Association came out in favour of the LTE standard. This announcement came suspiciously close after the collapse of the WiMax partnership between Sprint Nextel and Clearwire.

> Also in 2007, Alcatel-Lucent and LG Electronics announced they have together successfully tested the LTE technology, which is expected to enable downlink/uplink peak data rates above 100 Mbps/50 Mbps. In tests carried out by Bell Labs researchers in Alcatel-Lucent's Stuttgart facilities, Alcatel-Lucent's LTE and LG's mobile device prototypes were used. The companies predicted commercially available LTE products and services will be ready by 2009.

> Other LTE supporters include NEC, Alltel, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.

For more information see BuddeComm reports -
Global - LTE - Overview & Statistics

See also Why LTE needs re-farmed spectrum - and the best way to do it: July 2011