Telstra completes third LTE trial

Telstra has completed the third phase of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) trials by conducting a live video call between Sydney and Melbourne on Ericsson kit last week.

The carrier said today it had run the trial video call between its offices at 400 George Street in Sydney and 242 Exhibition Street in Melbourne.

It also conducted "speed and throughput tests" over the network, according to a video posted to YouTube.

Telstra's executive director of wireless networks and access technologies Mike Wright claimed it was the first inter-capital LTE link-up in Australia.

"This is the third in a series of trials we've been undertaking with LTE," he said.

"The first [test] was [about] understanding how far we could stretch the technology in a rural environment, the second was about understanding our alternate spectrum and this one is actually about making LTE a complete system - integrating it into the Next G network and seeing how it works end-to-end.

"And it's actually enabled us to undertake video calls between Sydney and Melbourne as if it was an operating service."

Telstra was using Ericsson LTE kit for the third phase of its trial. The previous phases used Nokia-Siemens Networks and Huawei hardware respectively.

The carrier's rivals, Optus and Vodafone Hutchison Australia, are carrying out their own LTE trials.