By Jo Best, 8 May 2007 12:59
NEWS
While today's 3G connectivity seems positively zippy at 1.8Mbps, some of the biggest names in telecoms are clubbing together to work on a standard that could boost mobile speeds to 100Mbps.
Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, Orange and its parent company France Telecom, T-Mobile and Vodafone have all announced their intention to work together on promoting LTE (long term evolution), a super high speed version of 3G.
The collaboration, under the banner of the LTE/SAE (Systems Architecture Initiative) Trial Initiative, will start work this month with a view to showcasing the standard.
The initiative will arrange field tests, interoperability experiments and customer trials to promote the 3G variant. The joint efforts are scheduled to last between 18 and 24 months.
According to the group, the technology is "expected to enable lower operating costs for operators as well as higher data-rate, lower latency end-user services and an improved end-user wireless mobility experience".
It's thought LTE networks will start to be rolled out from 2009 to 2010 and could cost operators $18bn.
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1. Simon
Am I the only who sees this as a bit like one of those terrible farcical comedies ? Here we are with the networks falling over themselves to NOT offer sensible access to data (hence the round of foot dragging "well I suppose we'll HAVE to allow it but only to avoid losing ground" announcements that they are finally allowing data bundles for less than two arms and a leg) - but at the same time teaming up to build ever faster networks to not allow customers to use !