Wifi Revolution

Communications equipments vendor Nokia Siemens (News - Alert) Networks (NSN) said on Wednesday it has begun shipping its Long Term Evolution (LTE) hardware for emerging high-speed wireless networks.

By the end of this year, NSN said it will be delivering the hardware to more than 10 major operators in Asia, Europe and North America.

To achieve the full functionality of LTE (News - Alert), operators need to have a software, which NSN says will be made available in the second half of 2009.

NSN claims it is the first vendor to offer LTE, and it will deliver fourth-generation-ready (4G) mobile network hardware.

The announcement came on the heels of Canadian operators’ Telus and Bell who said they would deploy a 3G high-speed packet access (HSPA) overlay network and eventually upgrade to Long-Term Evolution (LTE) using equipment from Nokia (News - Alert) Siemens.

Experts say the transition to 4G will cost less than third generation, which required steep investments and took years to gain popularity.

NSN’s new hardware offers to speed up mobile video sharing and downloading of music.

Matthias Reiss, head of LTE Radio of Nokia Siemens Networks (News - Alert), 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.”

Nokia Siemens said it expects to see commercial LTE network rollouts from 2010.

In parallel with the shipments, NSN says it is also working with major operators to conduct LTE trials in their respective live network environment.

With these trials, the company may gain feedback on end-user experience. NSN will use the results of these trials to ensure its products and solutions are fully optimized for commercial rollouts.

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