Optus is to shortly release the results of its on-going Sydney Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless trials.
The multi-vendor trials are part of a series of pilots of LTE technology by parent-company SingTel in Indonesia, the Phillpines and Singapore, and mirror those of Telstra which kicked-off Australia’s first LTE demonstration earlier this month.
The company has not announced details of the trials, but is expected to detail speed and performance results.
Telstra and Nokia Siemens Networks have claimed to have achieved peak download speeds of 100Mbps over 75kms over the 1800MHz band in a test in central Victoria. Speeds averaged between 88.1Mbps downlink and 29.6Mbps uplink.
LTE technology could be a boon for Telstra as fixed line revenues are set to fall in-line with the copper sell-off under an agreement with the NBN Co last month.
It is touted as the successor to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) services by industry body 3GPP, as it has a higher capacity for Voice over Internet Protocol and telephony services under an all-IP network. But it essentially requires operators to switch off 2G and 3G networks in a process that could mirror the phased and disrupted shutoff of the Australian CDMA network in 2008.
The rise of LTE is bad news for the WiMax camp which has had its position jeopardised as the 4G technology of choice, with as many as 100 members leaving the WiMax Forum over the last several month, and American telco giants Verizon and AT&T announcing their committed to LTE. WiMax mammoth Clearwire, along with Sprint Nextel signalled their intentions to move to LTE earlier this year.