Telstra verifies LTE operation at 75kms

Stuart Corner
Friday, 18 June 2010 17:11

Business IT - Networking

Telstra and Nokia Siemens Networks, one of three vendors chosen to participate in LTE trials, have demonstrated the ability of LTE to operate over distances of 75kms and deliver 100Mbps in 20MHz of spectrum.

In the test, conducted in the 2.6GHz band in regional Victoria, maximum downstream speeds of 100Mbps were achieved and upstream of 31Mbps (average speeds were 88.1Mbps and 29.6Mbps respectively).

Mike Wright Telstra's wireless executive director, told iTWire that the main aim of the trial was to see if the parameters in the LTE specification could be 'tweaked' to enable it to operate over such distances.

As the distance from base station to device increases the time taken for either unit to receive a response from a signal sent the other increases. If this interval is beyond what is permitted in the standard, the system will not function correctly.

"When they write these standards they don't usually have a country like Australia in mind and it is a question of seeing if we can modify the standards easily to get it working," Wright said. "We had to make some software and configuration changes [in the network, not the device].

He added that Telstra had made similar modifications to earlier networks. "With GSM we extended that first to 35km, then to 70km and then to 100km. CDMA we took to 160km and Next G we have taken out to 200km'¦Most of our traffic is over less than 100km, because beyond that the curvature of the earth means you need special antennas, or you need to be in an aircraft."

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