By Rajani Baburajan, TMCnet Contributor
Telstra, an Australian telecommunications company, and Nokia Siemens Networks have successfully conducted trials of next generation mobile technology in Australia, achieving peak speeds of 100Mbps download and 31Mbps upload over a distance of 75 kilometers in regional Victoria.
The extended range field trial was conducted between Mount Hope and Mount Burrumboot in central Victoria by engineers from Telstra (News – Alert) and Nokia Siemens Networks. The trial was conducted as part of testing the application of Long Term Evolution or “LTE (News – Alert)” technology in regional areas. The companies are conducting a combination of laboratory and long range field testing to determine the limitations that physical distance imposes on the LTE customer experience. For this test, Telstra used Nokia (News – Alert) Siemens Networks’ commercially-available LTE-ready Flexi Multiradio Base Station and Evolved Packet Core, with pre-commercial LTE USB dongles from third-party vendors.The range testing is of vital importance for the future of the technology in regional Australia, company officials said. Australia has the sixth largest landmass with the ninth lowest population density in the world. Networks have to travel long distances and cover large areas. Michael Rocca, chief operations officer, Telstra, says, “Telstra’s Next G network does this extremely well today and we want to ensure that when we bring LTE technology to Australian consumers, our customer experience remains one of the best in the world.” Kalevi Kostiainen, head of Nokia Siemens Networks (News – Alert), Australia and New Zealand says the results of this trial were made possible through close collaboration between Telstra and Nokia Siemens Networks. Through this joint trial the companies are analyzing how LTE can be extended to provide cost effective solutions for rural and remote environments. A recent report from Nokia Siemens Network finds that mobile broadband is presenting a full range of opportunities for network operators. In its techno-economic study published by Nokia Siemens Networks, researchers found that even without voice, operators can keep their monthly capital and operating expenditure to a low cost per subscriber. Read more about the report here.
Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Erin Harrison
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