Telstra turns on first LTE base stations - for trials only

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 24 May 2011 11:44

Business IT - Networking

Telstra has turned on the first LTE base stations in its network, in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth ahead of its scheduled launch of LTE services by year end.

Telstra announced in February that it would have LTE at 1800MHz available in capital city CBDs and major regional centres using network infrastructure from incumbent supplier Ericsson and dual LTE/HSPA USB dongles from Sierra Wireless by the end of 2011.

Today's announcement offers no additional information, except to say that the initial devices will be full dual mode devices that will operate seamlessly across the LTE service at 1800MHz and HSPA at
850MHz.

The announcement might seem to support Optus CEO Paul O'Sullivan's accusation that Telstra's LTE rollout is more about "bragging rights" than in expectation of demand. At the company's results briefing earlier this month O'Sullivan said "people want to be able to say they have [LTE] and that they can provide it to a small number of customers," but that Optus was not seeing the demand for LTE services.

However Telstra makes clear that the imperative for LTE is not about demand for LTE per se, but for increased capacity to meet surging demand for mobile broadband (LTE is more spectrally efficient than HSPA).

Mike Wright, executive director Telstra Networks & Access Technologies, said: "With more than a million mobile and wireless broadband customers joining Telstra in the past 12 months, and data usage on the Next G network doubling every year, the increased network capacity LTE will provide is vital.

"Ultimately, LTE will also provide faster data speeds, high quality video conferencing and faster response times for customers using mobile applications and the Internet on this network. However, the biggest benefit it will bring is additional capacity, meaning more customers can do more things on the network at the same time."

Such is Telstra's eagerness to get LTE up and running that it is pioneering LTE at 1800MHz, the only frequency it can presently use. Telstra said eighty percent of its mobile customers had migrated to the Next G network enabling the reuse of the 1800MHz spectrum previously used to deliver 2G mobile services.

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