Alcatel-Lucent and Orange have completed the first phase of their trial of Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband technology with a live network in France. The trial enabled Orange to address LTE capabilities for its network.
France Telecom’s brand, Orange, is currently working on developing new multimedia applications over LTE mobile networks, such as voice over IP (VoIP) steered by IMS and streaming video. The carrier used Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end LTE solution to conduct the trials, which resulted in good performance and network stability using the 2.6 GHz frequency band.
“These first successful results are a major step in the adoption process of LTE technology in Europe, and more specifically in France”, said Pierre Barnabé, Head of Alcatel-Lucent in France.
According to Alain Maloberti, Group VP, Networks, Architecture and Design for France Telecom-Orange, the company will proceed to the next phases of its trials, including VoIP, service continuity between 3G and LTE, video streaming, and self-optimisation.
Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE solution for the trial included base stations (eNodeBs), Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and its associated management system and the use of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) with Mobile TV offerings to support entertainment services. The company was in charge of LTE configuration, performance monitoring and fault management.
Alcatel-Lucent has secured 40 LTE customer trials so far, engaging in LTE projects pursued by global operators around the world. The company offers unique, pre-integrated, end-to-end LTE solution and a full set of associated professional services.
Alcatel-Lucent is one of the global providers of fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services for service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, offering solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users in more than 130 countries.
Orange is the key brand of France Telecom and one of the world’s largest telecommunications operators. With 126 million customers, the Orange brand now covers Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the Group operates. The group has a customer base of more than 190 million customers in 32 countries.These include 128.8 million mobile customers and 13.4 million broadband Internet (ADSL) customers worldwide.
