LTE gets green light

The Board of the GSMA – which includes 23 operator representatives and twelve of the world’s largest operator groups – threw its weight behind LTE (Long-Term Evolution) as the evolutionary path for the GSM family of technologies during its meeting on Sunday. The GSMA also signalled its intent to actively embrace other mobile players developing LTE technology and will start working with the NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) initiative.

LTE is an all-IP next-generation mobile standard regarded as the step on from HSPA technology. LTE is currently in the 3GPP’s standards development process, with a first version slated for publication in the next few months. LTE is intended to enable data rates many times faster than the high-speed mobile broadband connectivity already offered by today’s HSPA networks.

“As demand for mobile broadband grows ever stronger, LTE offers higher speed and greater capacity once spectrum becomes available,” Telefonica O2 Europe’s CTO Dave Williams told the Show Daily. “LTE builds on the success of HSPA and ensures the GSM community will stay ahead of the demand curve.”

The GSMA Board’s approval of LTE follows the successful delivery of the first in a series of wider industry test results aimed at proving its potential. The LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI) last week said its LTE tests have met goals for physical-layer throughput to mobile users. The initiative was founded by Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, France Telecom/Orange, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and was recently expanded with China Mobile, Huawei, LG Electronics, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Signalion, Telecom Italia and ZTE joining as new members. The joint activities are scheduled to run for up to two years and will include radio performance tests, early interoperability tests, and customer field trials.

“Commercial deployments of this technology are expected in the 2010 timeframe, with trial systems deployed even earlier,” said Matthias Reiss, Head of LTE Radio at Nokia Siemens Networks, in an interview with the Show Daily. “LTE is becoming real. LTE/SAE fulfils performance requirements specified by 3GPP. This successful demonstration is an important milestone for ensuring LTE becomes reality in time.”