Huawei predicts June 2009 for first commercial LTE infrastructure

Huawei said that they will provide LTE/SAE infrastructure to mobile operators based on multi-standard base stations and their first commercial LTE/SAE network is expected to be ready by June 2009.

“The rapid development and benefits of wireless technology has seen mobile broadband evolve from UMTS / HSPA / HSPA+ to LTE which offers more efficiency than other networks,” said Ihab Ghattas, Assistant President, Huawei Technologies Middle East during the SAMENA Telecommunications Council’s Convergence to Jordan 2008 conference this week. “Expectations are that by 2015 LTE subscriber base will reach 400-450 million generating revenues of almost EUR 150 billion.”

According to ABI Research, nearly 300,000 LTE Base Transceiver Stations will be installed and network operators will invest a total of almost $18 billion in LTE capital infrastructure by 2014.

“LTE and SAE (System Architecture Evolution) are 3GPP (3rd Generation partnership projects) concepts defining long-term evolution for radio access technology and core network respectively but when enhanced they are no longer inseparable,” added Mr. Ghattas. “LTE can be deployed by operators with heavy UMTS investments as a complement at hot spots as well as by operators who plan to directly deploy LTE on a wide scale.”

Huawei is the main sponsor and participant of LTE research and standardization with more than two hundred contributions in LTE RAN in 2006 (and 7% of total contributions) as well as being a member of NGMN.