Nokia Siemens Networks’ shipments of fully LTE-compatible Flexi Base Station hardware indicate a major milestone on the journey towards LTE technology which is the next step in mobile network evolution for both the GSM/WCDMA/HSPA and CDMA operators.
LTE networks will transform the user experience, taking mobile broadband services to a new level where browsing, email, video sharing, music downloads and many more applications will be immediately available, without any noticeable delay. This will be enabled by faster response times and improved throughput, with latency – the responsiveness of the network – down to 10-20 ms and peak rates of up to 173/58 Mbps (downlink/uplink, 20MHz, MIMO).
By evolving its Flexi Multimode Base Station hardware to support LTE, Nokia Siemens Networks provides a future-proof, easy and cost-efficient path to LTE via a software upgrade. This capability of Nokia Siemens Networks Flexi Base Stations is unmatched in the industry. The software upgrade will be available from the second half of 2009.
Matthias Reiss, head of LTE Radio of Nokia Siemens Networks, said: “LTE promises an exciting and radical transformation of the wireless experience with rich and fast multimedia services of incredible quality. And with the start of this LTE-compatible hardware, Nokia Siemens Networks promises its customers the smoothest migration to LTE possible. With only a software upgrade needed, the evolution to LTE radio network cannot be easier than this.”
In parallel with the ongoing first shipments of LTE compatible hardware, Nokia Siemens Networks is working with leading operators worldwide to conduct LTE trials in operators’ live network environment. With these trials, the company is gaining valuable experience on the LTE air interface performance in the field and receives feedback on end user experience with this new high performance technology. Nokia Siemens Networks uses the results of these trials to ensure its products and solutions and planning processes are fully optimised for commercial network rollouts, expected to start in 2010.
Nokia Siemens Networks is the forerunner in LTE with its fully 3GPP Rel 7 standards-compliant I-HSPA flat architecture innovation providing a smooth migration path for operators to LTE. The company was also the first to demonstrate LTE technology with data speeds in the 160Mb/s range as well as a successful handover between LTE and HSPA already in 2006, and continued breaking records in 2007 by demonstrating multiuser field trial in urban environment with peak data rates of 173 Mb/s. In February 2008 Nokia Siemens Networks showcased a live demo on commercial hardware and launched its LTE solution based on Flexi Multimode Base Station.
Building on the company’s technological leadership in radio networks, Nokia Siemens Networks together with Nokia has continued to pioneer LTE standardization work in 3GPP with largest number of contributions in the 3GPP RAN standardization and is pushing its commercialization by its comprehensive contribution to the tests performed by the LSTI (LTE-SAE Trial Initiative) and in customer field trials. Nokia Siemens Networks is already working on the next step of radio evolution called LTE-Advanced which is further enhancing LTE capabilities towards the data rate of 1 Gbps.