Network vendors line up LTE resources for Telstra

Ericsson, NSN and Huawei win place in coveted trial.

Ericsson has confirmed the resources of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) global competence centre in Melbourne will play a key role in a trial of the technology by Telstra.

Telstra announced a three-vendor trial of LTE to start in May and run for between three and six months.

A spokesman for Ericsson said the centre, set up in July 2008, would apply the knowledge gained from global projects and field trials at the likes of Verizon, AT&T and SingTel to the Telstra trial.

"The team will leverage its global experiences and work closely with Ericsson's Telstra account team and Telstra's wireless network group," the Ericsson spokesman said.

"The centre is also closely connected with Ericsson's wider global resources, such as R&D test labs in Sweden working in product integration and verification."

Nokia-Siemens Networks spokesman Phil Ore said the vendor would offer "maximum resources" to Telstra for the trial, which would also occur in Victoria.

"We'll have the full company behind us for this LTE trial," Ore said.

The third vendor to be named in the LTE trial was Huawei. A spokesman for the vendor said in a statement that "more than 20 Huawei staff will work with Telstra to complete the trial."

Network kit

Huawei said it would supply Telstra "with the necessary base station equipment, core network equipment and LTE terminals" for the trial period.

The spokesman for Nokia-Siemens Networks confirmed the vendor would supply roughly the same type of kit.

He talked up the credentials of the vendor's flexi multiradio base station product although it was unclear whether this would be used in the trial.

Ericsson provided a more detailed kit list.

"We will trial our end-to-end LTE equipment that is already being rolled out commercially in other parts of the world," a spokesman said.

"This encompasses an end-to-end LTE radio and EPC (Evolved Packet Core) network comprising of eNodeB radio base stations, MME (Mobility Management Entity), CPG (Converged Packet Gateway), HSS (Home Subscriber Server) and OSS (Operational Support System)."