EU to Invest €18M in Ultra High-Speed Mobile Internet

August 19, 2009 // Published as a news service by IHS

EU funding of research on Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced technology, which will offer mobile Internet speeds up to a hundred times faster than current 3G networks, will begin Jan. 1, 2010.

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LTE is becoming the industry's first choice for next-generation mobile networks, also thanks to substantial EU research funding since 2004.

Some 25 years ago, Europe made the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) standard the backbone of modern mobile telephony. Based on Europe's joint research and the strength of the EU's single market, the GSM standard is today used by 80% of the world's mobile networks.

LTE promises to be a similar success, as EU-funded research continues to bring cutting-edge technology to the daily lives of Europeans. In Europe, LTE is currently being trialled by mobile operators in Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. It is expected to be commercially available in Sweden and Norway in the first half of 2010.

Between 2004 and 2007, the EU supported research on optimization and standardization of LTE (the WINNER I and II projects, run by a consortium of 41 leading European companies and universities) with €25 million. This led to the development of the first concept for a LTE-based network infrastructure.

The European Commission (EC) decided to start investing a further €18 million into research on the enhanced version of LTE, LTE Advanced. In September, the EC will start to negotiate the details with project consortia, including the flagship ARTIST4G, which builds on the achievements of the WINNER projects and unites 4G industry and researchers from Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. The new projects are expected to start in January 2010.

The EC sees strong potential in the deployment of LTE and LTE Advanced technology:

• LTE will boost the capacities of network operators, enabling them to provide faster mobile broadband to more users at lower prices, revolutionizing Europe's mobile telecoms market.
• LTE Advanced will propel mobile broadband speeds up to one gigabit (one thousand megabits) per second, allowing users on the go to fully benefit from sophisticated online services, such as high-quality TV or video on demand.
• LTE uses radio spectrum more efficiently, enabling mobile networks to benefit from the "digital dividend" and use the frequencies freed by the switchover from analogue to digital TV (see IP/09/1112). Signals will travel further than with current GSM technology and reduce the number of antenna sites needed to achieve the same network coverage, preserving Europe's landscapes and reducing energy consumption.
• LTE could bring mobile broadband to less populated regions and contribute to the reduction of the "digital divide" between rural and urban areas. In late 2008, 23% of the population in rural areas of the EU still could not subscribe to a DSL Internet connection (see IP/09/1221).

Leading mobile operators and manufacturers around the world - such as Orange, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile, AT&T, NTT-DoCoMo, Verizon, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks - have already committed to using the LTE standard. By 2013, operators worldwide are expected to invest nearly €6 billion ($ 8.6 billion) in LTE equipment, according to market analysts.

"With LTE technologies, Europe's research 'know-how' will continue to set the tone for the development of mobile services and devices around the globe, just as we did in the past decades with the GSM standard," said Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for telecoms and media.

"LTE technologies will turn mobile phones into powerful mobile computers. Millions of new users will get ultra high-speed Internet access on their portable devices, wherever they are. This will create tremendous opportunities and plenty of space for growing the digital economy."

In July 2009, EU member states followed the European Parliament in approving the EC's proposal to update the 1987 GSM Directive, making the 900-MHz band available for other technologies, including LTE (see IP/09/1192).

Overall, in 2007-2013 the EU will invest more than €700 million into research on future networks, half of which will be allocated to wireless technologies contributing to development of 4G and beyond-4G networks.

For more information, see the EU web page on research on networks of the future and LTE, plus web page for EU-funded project on Wireless World Initiative New Radio (WINNER).

LTE
Long Term Evolution is the next step from current mobile technologies, such as 3G, W-CDMA and HSPA. This new radio access technology will be optimized to deliver very fast data speeds of up to 100 megabits per second when downloading and 50 megabits per second for uploading.

Designed to be backwards-compatible with GSM and HSPA, LTE incorporates Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO) in combination with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) in the downlink and Single Carrier FDMA in the uplink to provide high levels of spectral efficiency and end user data rates exceeding 100 megabits per second, coupled with major improvements in capacity and reductions in latency. LTE will support channel bandwidths from 1.25 MHz to 20 MHz and both FDD and TDD operation.

LTE Advanced
LTE Advanced extends the technological principles behind LTE into a further step change in data rates. Incorporating higher order MIMO (4x4 and beyond) and allowing multiple carriers to be bonded together into a single stream, target peak data rates of one gigabit per second have been set.

LTE Advanced also intends to use a number of further innovations, including the ability to use non-contiguous frequency ranges, with the intent that this will alleviate frequency range issues in an increasingly crowded spectrum, a self-back-hauling base station and full incorporation of Femto cells using Self-Organizing Network techniques.

LTE Advanced will be 3GPP's technology as a candidate for the ITU-R IMT-Advanced process, which is intended to identify 4G technologies.

Table 1 - LTE Compared to Previous Mobile Internet Technologies

Table Source: Global Mobile Suppliers Association, April 2009.

Source: European Commission (EC).