Vividwireless to trial TD-LTE with Huawei gear

Stuart Corner
Monday, 29 November 2010 11:48

Business IT - Networking

Vividwireless is to trial TD-LTE (time division-LTE) in its existing spectrum by applying a software upgrade to the Huawei supplied WiMAX base stations that support its commercial WiMAX network.

The trial will take place in Sydney around Redfern in the Inner City and Horsley Park in the Western Suburbs from December and will cover the market readiness of TD-LTE, including the technology's capacity, coverage and 'real world' performance, vividwireless said.

"These locations will allow vividwireless to test the performance of the technology in high demand, high density, inner city conditions such as apartments and cafes, as well as suburban conditions."

Huawei Australia's CTO, Peter Rossi, said that Huawei's SingleRAN base station, used by vividwireless for its WiMAX network, enabled vividwireless to transition its network to TD-LTE with a simple software upgrade, allowing for a smooth technology transition according to its network requirements.

vividwireless CEO Martin Mercer said the trial, with Huawei, would enable the company to "evaluate and determine the very best mobile voice and broadband service to meet our customers' future needs...Huawei's global experience with the technology has found TD-LTE can deliver wireless broadband that is much faster than ADSL2+, with peak speeds of more than 100Mbps."

However, there are strong indications that LTE will become the dominant technology for wireless broadband, eclipsing Mobile WiMax and enabling operators to enjoy the cost advantages is both network equipment and user terminals that will result from much larger scale.

Just last week EnergyAustralia announced plans for a mobile WiMAX based smart grid network, but said it would also start trials of LTE.

Colin Goodwin, broadband strategy manager for supplier Ericsson Australia/NZ, told iTWire: "The tender we responded to was for WiMAX, but from what is happening in the market you can see that LTE is gaining the lion's share of the market around the world and that will lead to significant economies of scale and that coincided with their tender process, so they elected to build in a transition to LTE."

Also, NetComm, which was touting its LTE credentials at its AGM last week, said: "With 113 network commitments in 46 countries, and 43 additional pre-commitment trials, it is anticipated that at least 55 LTE networks will be in commercial service by the end of 2012."

vividwireless launched in Perth in March, 2010 and has since expanded its network to cover select parts of Sydney and Melbourne. It says site construction is almost complete in Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra.

TD-LTE TD-LTE uses TDD (Time Division Duplex) unpaired spectrum channels that combine the uplink and downlink, and split resources. Australia's mobile network operators have been trialling, and will ultimately deploy, FDD-LTE - frequency division duplex.