T-Mobile gives LTE a workout
by Kendrick Struthers-Watson
T-Mobile, working jointly with Nortel, recently became one of the first wireless network operators to demonstrate at its Bonn, Germany facility a NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Network) for its fitness under everyday conditions.
During the NGMN live test, data was transmitted to and from a vehicle driving between Deutsche Telekom’s headquarters on the left side of the River Rhine and the T-Mobile headquarters on the river’s right bank. On the four km test route the vehicle, which was driven at speeds up to 100kph (60mph), demonstrated download speeds in excess of 130Mbps (max 170 Mbps) and upload speeds up to 44 Mbps (max 50 Mbps).
The trial system was working in the 2.1 GHz band using multiple radio cell sites providing true mobility (including handover) and at varying vehicle speeds we experienced LTE enabled services across the Nortel solution.
In his introduction to the event, T-Mobile CTO International, Joachim Horn said that mobile broadband had become a reality with data revenues multiplying by 1.5 times between Q206 and Q208 whilst mobile data traffic from 06/08[??] to 06/08 and showed a growth factor of 13.
“This growth will continue”, said Horn. “Working on Moore’s Law, the performance of digital circuits doubles every two years – but the price stays the same.”
We don’t like it slow
Horn went on to say that with the evolution of the networks, LTE would have an enormous impact and now with HSPA in place, “You can never go back. When customers get used to better performance, that’s what they expect forever. The more speed we provide, the more they want and that’s what will fuel our networks in the near future.”
Judging by the experience of the field test when broadcast TV, live video calls and HD viewing was all running in parallel, as well as making a voice call, LTE shows immense commercial promise that wireless operators can exploit to offer the rich content services of the type demanded by bandwidth hungry consumers.
2010: the year of LTE
Horn continued by saying that there would be several success pointers for LTE:
Device usability: early GSM devices were not for purpose If we look at what IPod and iPhone did for consumers’ perception then HSPDA will do he same for mobile consumers.
Optimized Web Experience: Applications and Internet access are not new to consumers, but through LTE they will have better experiences in their browser, screen and speed. They won’t have to learn new ways, just appreciate better ways of what they know.
Worry free roaming: as prices become unified, data roaming will increase through the vastly improved capability of LTE.
Network Innovation: The network will no longer be viewed as a commodity. Technology will prove to be the engine of innovation. Today, we are not forgetting about 3G at all as we have to re-use and maximise the resources to go forward and I think that LTE is the most likely technology to be adopted for 4G. No decision has been made yet it is gradually proving to be good and shows a great potential. Network latency is greatly diminished.
“LTE is clearly here – it’s on the street and ready for lots of applications and it’s not too ambitious to say it will hit the road on 2010,” said Horn. “170 Mbps is well within our reach now.”
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