Globe Telecom Tests LTE in Quezon City with SingTel and NEC

Globe Telecom has successfully completed its Phase 1 field trials of 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless technology with its parent company SingTel and Japan's NEC. LTE is the next step in the evolution of 3GPP radio interfaces to deliver a faster “Global Mobile Broadband”.

LTE has a theoretical maximum downstream of 150Mbps and can be upgraded further to 300+Mbps when the next release of LTE has been implemented.

3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), is the latest standard in the mobile network technology tree that produced the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSxPA network technologies.

The LTE specification provides downlink peak rates of at least 100 Mbit/s, an uplink of at least 50 Mbit/s and RAN round-trip times of less than 10 ms. LTE supports scalable carrier bandwidths, from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz and supports both frequency division duplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD).

The main advantages with LTE are high throughput, low latency, plug and play, FDD and TDD in the same platform, an improved end-user experience and a simple architecture resulting in low operating costs. LTE will also support seamless passing to cell towers with older network technology such as GSM, cdmaOne, UMTS, and CDMA2000. The next step for LTE evolution is LTE Advanced and is currently being standardized in 3GPP Release 10.

The Phase 1 field trial verified the required commercial service such as the latency and hand-over within urban environments in Makati and Quezon City. The trial achieved a maximum 60Mbps downlink at the 10MHz bandwidth.

NEC will continue providing support to Globe Telecom and Singtel for the Phase 2 field trial of LTE towards its commercialization in 2011. Last September, SingTel and NEC announced plans for operational field trials of LTE at SingTel subsidiaries in Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines.


LTE hardware photo courtesy of loQal.PH

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Disclosure: Author is a forum administrator of myGlobe, a website of Globe Telecom.