Game plan

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Motorola demonstrated live video streaming between a moving vehicle and its booth at Mobile World Congress using LTE technology.

As vice president strategy of Alcatel-Lucent's wireless networks product division, André Méchaly has a particularly strong insight into LTE.

Méchaly says that while standardisation for LTE is yet to be finalised, vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola are already at advanced stages of testing the technology, and he says that the type of LTE technology Alcatel-Lucent demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress was not a prototype. He says that deployments of the technology could occur as soon as this year.

"Verizon is today probably the operator with the most aggressive plan in terms of its LTE map, as they plan to introduce the technology in the second half of this year or next year," he says.

Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo is also at an advanced stage of LTE testing, and could deploy a network in the next two or three years. European operators seem to be more muted on the subject of LTE, although many operators on the continent are "looking at the technology or trialing it", according to Méchaly.

Efficiency gains

LTE has numerous advantages over existing wireless networks owing to what Méchaly describes as its "flat architecture". When compared with a 3G network, LTE removes various bottlenecks and simplifies the infrastructure.

For example, it combines the RNC (radio network controller) functions with the Node B, or base station, removing a stage that created additional latency in 3G networks.

"On top of that, in LTE voice is carried by Voice over IP, so we no longer have the circuit switch core which we have in the 3G network. We have simplified the network, reduced bottlenecks, and improved the latency," Méchaly says.

LTE also makes more efficient use of available spectrum and can operate on a larger set of frequencies than the previous technologies, which will be vital in the next decade as demand for wireless broadband proliferates.

"You can have a big pipe of 20 megahertz width while 3G is limited to five. It can carry four times more users on the pipe." Méchaly says. "3G is working well at the moment, but if I look at my son - and if all of the children of my peers are behaving like him - 3G will not be enough."

Méchaly is particularly excited by the type of applications that LTE will enable. Apart from the obvious interactive applications such as instant messaging, gaming for several people in parallel and better quality video conferencing, Méchaly admits that it is almost impossible to predict the type of services and applications that will grow from LTE. "We cannot foresee more that 15% of what will happen in terms of applications," he says.

Despite this, new applications that end users feel they need will be vital to the demand for and take up of LTE networks. "[For the take up of LTE] you need the infrastructure to be ready, and the terminals to be available with the correct price and autonomy. Further, you need operators with at least nice offers or tariffs, and you need to ensure the end-user has an interest in using the service," Méchaly says.

And for this reason, Alcatel-Lucent is focusing on mobile applications as well as the technology behind LTE, by working closely with its partners involved in mobile applications.

The company has established a special group, called NG Connect, to work with companies from other parts of the mobile ecosystem and to allow application providers to test products on its LTE technology.

The objective of the initiative is to help ensure that when operators launche LTE networks, there will be companies ready to provide services for end users.

"The purpose of NG Connect is to create the complete ecosystem of applications, vendors, industry, verticals and utilities to work on utility." Méchaly adds that the initiative will allow companies that may have good ideas about potentially successful applications, but which lack the necessary funding to develop them, to test their products and experiment with new ideas.

"We invite those companies to come to our labs, test software applications, test their terminals, test their car with plug-in LTE module in front of our network. On this initiative we are followed by big names like HP and Samsung but also smaller names, very innovative companies." Méchaly adds that 14 companies are already working with Alcatel-Lucent through NG Connect and this is set to grow.

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