3G standards body gives the green light to 100Mbps data standard

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 17 December 2008 10:05

Business IT - Technology

Prospects for 3G cellular networks delivering data at tens of megabits per second improved significantly this week when the global 3G standards body, 3GPP agreed to include specifications for long term evolution (the standard for data over cellular beyond the HSPA deployed in networks today) in the upcoming release 8 of the 3GPP standard.

The decision was taken at a 3GPP meeting in Athens last week at which 3GPP also agreed on what should be included in Release 9, which is scheduled to be frozen in December 2009.

According to 3GPP, "There is significant commitment from operators to deploy this technology, and this landmark achievement will allow them to realize their early deployment plans." 3G cellular vendors are confidently predicting commercial availability of LTE infrastructure equipment in 2009 and touting download speeds of up to 100Mbps.

Kursten Leins, strategic marketing manager - multimedia, with Ericsson Australia, told iTWire: "The announced functional freeze of LTE means that...3GPP has agreed upon all specifications necessary for vendors to now complete development work. In other words, put the finishing touches on the technology ready for commercial release."

Leins added that the functional freeze of LTE would enable Ericsson and other vendors to meet the commitments given earlier to be able to deliver LTE equipment to customers during the second half of 2009, as previously committed.

Ericsson recently demonstrated LTE equipment in Australia and Nokia Siemens Networks announced last month that it was shipping LTE compatible base station hardware that would need only a software upgrade (available from the second half of 2009) to achieve full LTE functionality.

Nokia Siemens also said that by the end of 2008 it would be delivering the new LTE-ready hardware to more than 10 major mobile operators in Europe, Asia and North America, and it claimed to be conducting LTE trials in operators' live network environments in preparation for the expected launch of commercial networks in 2010.

Ericsson has a Global Centre of Excellence for LTE, based in Melbourne and Leins said it would play a key role in driving Ericsson's LTE deployment globally, and would "provide Australian operators with world-class network design and implementation capability, locally."

However he said uncertainty on access to new spectrum was likely to hold back LTE deployment in Australia. "Given that LTE will be commercially available in 2009, it's clear that the industry would benefit from the certainty of spectrum becoming available in a timely manner."

Leins said the main inhibitor for LTE deployment in Australia was the availability of relevant spectrum, such as 2.5 - 2.69GHz (band 7). "The regulator [the ACMA] has started industry consultation to make spectrum available for new mobile broadband technologies such as LTE, but at this time we still don't have a commited timeline for spectrum to become freed up and available for use in Australia."

Telstra, whose 3G network was supplied by Ericsson, is boasting that its Next G investment roadmap is "already looking towards LTE technology in 2010 and beyond." However, although it will operate in current cellular spectrum allocations, to achieve its full potential of 100Mbps and above LTE needs 100MHz spectrum blocks. Regardless of the uncertainty, Telstra seems confident of getting the spectrum it needs in the next few years.