In October 2009 Long Term Evolutionist featured interoperability testing for Samsung GT-B3710 USB LTE modem on TeliaSonera’s LTE network in Stockholm.

In December, TeliaSonera became the first operator in the world to offer commercial 4G/LTE services, in the central parts of Stockholm and Oslo.The Stockholm 4G city network is supplied by Ericsson. The Oslo 4G city network is supplied by Huawei.

TeliaSonera has three nation wide 4G/LTE licenses in the 2.6 GHz frequency band; in Sweden, Norway and Finland. The agreement with Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks cover network roll out during 2010 and 2011.

During TeliaSonera’s LTE launch event, download speeds that exceeded 40 Mbps were achieved, judging by Bredbandskollen. The upload speeds measured were more in line with the 5 Mbps that Northstream experienced.

Recently a market research company, Northstream tested 4G/LTE network using Samsung GT-B3710 USB LTE modem on TeliaSonera’s LTE network in Stockholm.

Here’s the LTE Speedtest report,
Overall first LTE experience is a very positive one.It works, and that’s respectable.The instalation of Samsung USB LTE modem is very easy suprisingly both connection manager software and modem firmware required an immediate upgrade.
Browsing experience was rather good.Lower latency compared to 3G networks. But the throughput measurements were sort of a disappointment.It never exceeded 12 Mbps in downlink even though TeliaSonera boasts super-fast mobile broadband speeds up to 10 times higher than with Turbo-3G.. More impressive in that case was the 5 Mbps uplink.

TeliaSonera’s LTE network, which uses spectrum in the 2.6GHz band, is still in its infancy. The distance from Northstream’s offices to a base station could explain the lower-than-expected download speed, according to Northstream CEO Bengt Nordström.

“It seems like the capacity drops off fast as the distance from a base station increases,” said Nordström.

Questions to TeliaSonera about the distance from its offices to a base station went unanswered, according to Nordström.

TeliaSonera does not want to enter a technical discussion on why Northstream was not able to get higher speeds, according to a spokeswoman.

The actual bandwidth in any kind of mobile network will vary depending on where you are, the number of users in the network and what kind of service the subscriber is using, she said.

TeliaSonera continues the build out of 4G in Sweden and Norway. The common 4G/LTE core network will be delivered by Ericsson and the radio networks by Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks.

TeliaSonera’s current 4G networks cover the central city areas of Stockholm and Oslo. The 4G network roll-out will continue to Sweden’s 25 largest municipalities and recreation areas and to Norway’s four largest municipalities to offer communication services for the future

This is a good news for LTE deployment around the world. Congratulation TeliaSonera.

Northstream’s Blog Via PCWorld

As Shenzhen Post reported that Ying Weimin, the president of Huawei LTE product line, said Huawei had got over 30% shares in the tertiary tender of China Mobile 3G network construction, being the largest share among all the manufacturers. He also professed optimism about the future growth of Huawei, and predicted that global commercial LTE would be first introduced in the developed countries such as Scandinavia and North America in the next second or third quarter.

In addition Ying Weimin said that the company was striving for LTE orders from US Verizon and AT & T; while in Europe, it was contacting with major European operators, including Vodafone.

On November 13rd, Huawei announced that China Mobile had selected Huawei to deploy the world’s first LTE TDD network—the World Expo demo TD-LTE network, which had adopted LTE FDD/TDD convergence program; another operator China Mobile selected was Motorola. In the GSMA Show on Nov 17th, China Mobile and Huawei Technologies jointly displayed TD-LTE/SAE trial network deployed by Huawei in Hong Kong.

Huawei claimed that the number of its LTE test and commercial networks had reached 25, including two commercial networks; and Huawei was confident to reduce the distance from the world’s largest Mobile equipment manufacturer – Ericsson in market share.

According to the synchronous Huawei documents, the company has deployed more than 20 LTE/SAE testbeds cooperating with global operators so far; and among the announced four LTE commercial networks contracts in the worldwide, Huawei makes up half of them.

SingTel invited Huawei as one of 6 vendor for LTE deployment, namely Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, Nokia, Siemens and ZTE.

SingTel plans to launch LTE technology regional trial in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, including their subsidiaries the second-largest mobile operator Optus in Australia, the largest mobile operator Telkomsel in Indonesia and the second-largest mobile operator Globe Telecom in Philippines.

The experiment will start in the first half of 2010, and is planned to last 6-9 months. It will be carried out under a variety of scenarios and environment, covering different frequency bands and urban environment.

Recently Huawei and Telecom Italia completed Italy’ s first LTE test to demonstrate 4G Ultrabroadband Mobile Technology using 14 LTE cells on the existing mobile broadband infrastructure in Turin, the test successfully showcased a downlink speed of over 140Mb/s per cell, demonstrated by three simultaneous connections.

Via Shenzhen Post

Samsung isn’t just prepping WiMAX release 2 ( 802.16m ) for 4G deployment but also develop its LTE USB modem.

It seems Samsung doesn’t want to let LG to become the dominant player in LTE devices industry. Recently LG unveiled its LTE USB modem at CommunicAsia 2009 and showed up another model at CEATEC JAPAN 2009.

Through extensive testing in Stockholm, Samsung GT-B3710 and Ericsson’s infrastructure recently have complied with the industry standard for commercial deployment,3GPP Release 8 March baseline.

The Samsung GT-B3710 will be available for sale, at the time being, through the Telia Sonera provider, starting 2010, in Norway and Sweden. It is said to offer large speeds: 150Mbps for download and 50Mbps for upload. This will be a great evolution, comparing to the 42Mbps download speed and 12Mbps upload speed, offered by still unlaunched HSPA 3G+ networks.

This is a good news. More LTE USB modem will available soon on the market.

AVING, HTLounge

Verizon Wireless is not the only US-based company that operates LTE development center.
As a member of 3GPP, ZTE has edited three standards involving 3G radio access networks and terminal systems. The company is also a board member of the WiMAX Forum.But it is no accident that ZTE has established an LTE not a WiMAX test center at its U.S. headquarters in Richardson, Texas.

In the lab, ZTE’s team of local researchers will work closely with carriers to test and verify ZTE’s dual-mode CDMA/LTE platform to the highest industry standards in order to ensure that it’s poised for successful commercial deployment.

Currently, Verizon Wireless is the main nationwide U.S. CDMA carrier moving to LTE. Executives at Clearwire, which provides 4G service for CDMA operator Sprint, have acknowledged they could adopt LTE in the long term if it ends up being in the best interest of the company. GSM-based AT&T also is moving to LTE.

Using the dual-mode CDMA/LTE platform, ZTE can demonstrate an FTP downloading rate up to 52 Mbps at 10 MHz bandwidth and conduct CDMA voice service and LTE HD (High Definition) video demonstrations simultaneously.

Actualy ZTE and Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) already demo LTE TDD (Long Term Evolution Time Division Duplex) wireless HD video IOT (Interoperability Test) calls during the ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva from 5-9 Oct. This is also the first cross-vendor LTE TDD IOT successfully completed in the industry.

ZTE’s strategy is to unified platform strategy,which laid a sound foundation for the evolution from CDMA to LTE for the evolution from CDMA to LTE. Its Software Defined Radio (SDR) base station platform based on the microTCA standard makes possible unified hardware architectures of all wireless products, thus avoiding the investment risk caused by the technology evolution route.

ZTE’s unified SDR solution can support multiple radio access technologies, for example, GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX and LTE. With SDR solution, one set of equipment can be software configured as dual-mode or multi-mode.

ZTE boasts the SDR solution runs radio functionality as software modules on an integrated, unified hardware platform, allowing CDMA operators to cost-effectively upgrade their networks to LTE.

Congratulation ZTE ! Hopefully Verizon Wireless or even Sprint 4G will utilize ZTE’s dual-mode CDMA/LTE platform..

You can learn ZTE’s CDMA to LTE Evolution Strategy by download this PDF file (inside rar).

Press Release Via GLGroup

Verizon Wireless expects to commercially launch its LTE 4G network in up to 30 markets in 2010, covering 100 million people. Verizon has promised full nationwide 4G coverage by 2013.
At the Mobile World Congress 2009 in February, according to Verizon CTO Dick Lynch,there will be a few handsets and laptop cards with LTE about a year after the 2010 LTE network launch, but he stressed that voice is going to be carried over the 3G network well into the next decade — LTE will be for devices. In the future, consumers will have 8-10 LTE-enabled devices that “the consumer won’t even know has broadband,” he said.

You might download the Verizon CTO Dick Lynch’s LTE slide presentation (PDF) at Mobile World Congress 2009.

Later on Verizon Wireless is on the track of LTE deployment.In August Verizon Wireless completed its first test LTE data calls in Boston and Seattle based on the 3GPP Release 8 standard.

Also in Dick Lynch’s LTE presentation (PDF) mentioned about Verizon Wireless LTE Innovation Center.

At the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2009,Verizon Wireless announced of the lab at the Verizon Wireless LTE Innovation Center also introduced a virtual LTE Innovation Center where device developers can access an online portal (www.lte.vzw.com).

The Verizon Wireless LTE Innovation Center will be a catalyst for delivering new and innovative devices that connect people, places and things wirelessly using next-generation LTE technology, and providing tools for participants to rapidly develop non-traditional products and solutions within Verizon Wireless’ wide array of LTE technology and product enablers in various fields, including consumer electronics and appliances, healthcare, security and telematics.

The company previously announced that the physical LTE Innovation Center – comprised of the lab and experience center – will be located in the Boston suburb of Waltham, Mass. The experience center of the LTE Innovation Center is anticipated to open in the first half of 2010.

Apparently  LTE Innovation Center’s function in small part just like WiMAX Forum certification program for WiMAX product that pass WiMAX Forum testing center.

Press Release

It seems LTE carrier in Asia Pacific region especially in Japan showed their commitments in LTE deployment.Last time we saw LG unveiled its LTE USB modem at CommunicAsia 2009.

Recently KDDI demonstrated video streaming from HD Camcorder to Plasma TV  and online gaming through LTE network at CEATEC JAPAN 2009. You can see video  of KDDI LTE demo at the end of this post.

Apparently KDDI worked together with Motorola to deploy LTE in Japan.

In another booth, NTT DoCoMo also displayed LTE USB modem from LG and Express card from Fujitsu.

Hopefully KDDI and NTT DoCoMo were just in time for their commitments to launch LTE in Q4 2010.

Watch video of LTE demo from KDDI at CEATEC JAPAN 2009
Click here to view the embedded video.

Via ASCII, K-Tai

Based on document of list commitments (March 2009) from mobile operator there will be 120 variety of commitments levels intentions to trial, deploy, migrate of LTE around the world.
Telefonica is a Spanish telecommunication company which operates globally, it is one of the largest fixed-line and mobile telecommunications companies in the world.
Present in 25 countries and an average of 257,000 professionals. More than 27.5 billion euros and more than 260 million customer accesses (until June 2009).The 3rd in terms of number of clients (with the acquisition of O2, Movistar and Manx Telecom) only behind China Mobile and Vodafone, and in the top five in market value. They were behind China Mobile, AT&T, and Vodafone in November 2007.

Recently Telefónica has reached an agreement with six LTE technology providers to launch the test projects in six different countries with the view to rolling out 4G networks in the different regions where the Company operates. This project, coordinated globally and underpinned by the advantages afforded from the Company’s geographic scale, forms part of the process for selecting technology partners in LTE networks, the rollout of which Telefónica aims to be prepared as far in advance as possible, in line with its status as the international leader in innovation.

The countries selected for testing are Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Czech Republic in Europe, and Brazil and Argentina in Latin America.

The most recent public demonstration of LTE technology by Telefónica took place in April in Madrid. It consisted of the first VoIP call, in a videocall using an LTE mini-network installed by Ericsson, in a videoconference, and successive downloads of data and images at transfer speeds in excess of 140 Mbps, about 10 times faster than current 3G networks using HSPA technology.

Here are the level commitments of Telefónica companies from March 2009’s LTE list :

• Q4 2011 in UK by O2 UK network
• Q4 2011 in Germany by O2 German network
• Q4 2012 in Brazil by Terra network
• Q4 2012 in Argentina by Movistar and Terra network

There were no information in the list of March 2009, presumably in Spain will provided by Movistar network and in Czech will provided by O2 Czech Republic.

Press Release

Recently LTEist shared document of list compiled from Informa Telecoms & Media and public announcements. It includes a variety of commitment levels including intentions to trial, deploy, migrate, etc.

There is another good LTE tutorial found in “3G Evolution, Second Edition: HSPA and LTE for Mobile Broadband”  which coverage on LTE in this edition includes 270 pages on LTE.

“Reading a specification requires some effort. After reading the spec, you would know WHAT to transmit, but not WHY and HOW. This is where our book becomes important. Not only does it provide an easy-to-read description of the signals, procedures, and mechanisms in LTE, it also tells you WHY a certain signal, channel or procedure is present and HOW it is used. After reading the book, you will have a good understanding on how LTE works and why it is designed the way it is.” - the authors (Erik Dahlman, Stefan Parkvall, Johan Skold, and Per Beming Author)

You can download here or here

Or if you wanna have this book in hardcover version,you can own 3G Evolution, Second Edition: HSPA and LTE for Mobile Broadband on sale for $119.95 $73.33.

TelecomAsia recently reported in Asia Pacific there were 55 LTE networks in these categories compared to 25 mobile WiMAX networks in 1Q09, although mobile WiMAX had the clear advantage of 12 networks in service compared to zero for LTE, according to Informa Telecoms & Media research. In addition, including fixed WiMAX there were 71 total WiMAX networks in Asia Pacific in these categories in 1Q09, with 40 of those in service.

WiMAX continues to build momentum globally, with 456 WiMAX networks worldwide either in service, in deployment or planned at the end of March 2009, a 53% increase from 299 networks in the same categories in March 2008. But the number of operators worldwide planning LTE deployments has also increased sharply in the last year, from a handful in 1Q08 to 119 operators in 1Q09 with LTE networks either planned or in deployment. Another 43 operators have LTE licenses or are positioning for LTE licenses, taking the number of likely LTE networks to 162.

This means LTE networks – albeit all of them are planned or in deployment rather than live – have already passed mobile WiMAX 802.16e networks, which stood at 129 in 1Q09. The other 366 WiMAX networks were based largely on fixed WiMAX 802.16d-2004.

WiMAX of course has a head-start of several years on LTE, which has given WiMAX the distinct advantage of 291 live networks as of 1Q09, with 68 of those based on mobile WiMAX, compared to zero for LTE.

The bottom line is that LTE is increasingly likely to dominate the next-gen mobile broadband market, based on an analysis of operator 4G network deployment plans and current mobile broadband subscribers by technology, but mobile WiMAX can still play a significant role. The sooner it moves on from the fight with LTE and focuses on its strengths in the wireless broadband market, the larger that role will be.

In the meantime, while WiMAX and LTE sport technical similarities on the RAN side with OFDMA, they’re less likely to come together in the core any time so on.

Asked if the industry might see structural separation for WiMAX and LTE, with branded RANs connected to a common LTE/SAE core, Garth Collier,Intel’s Asia/Japan MD for WiMAX, said the WiMAX Forum isn’t really looking at it, and plans to have end-to-end certification for WiMAX ready in the next 12 months.

Takehiro Nakamura, director of NTT DoCoMo’s radio system group and chairman of 3GPP TSG-RAN, said that the 3GPP has been discussing interworking between LTE and Wi-Fi, which could also include WiMAX.

But, he added, “the status so far is not that good. It could happen in the future but it depends on deployments from operators.”

Recently at CommunicAsia 2009 LG demonstrated the world’s first handset modem chip based on LTE technology. It is nearly 10 times faster than the fastest 3G HSDPA handsets available today and LG will show how this chip can be used to simultaneously download four HD-quality videos and play them back in real-time.

Read

3G Americas shared LTE document of list compiled from Informa Telecoms & Media and public announcements. It includes a variety of commitment levels including intentions to trial, deploy, migrate, etc.

You can download LTE document (PDF) here.