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Alcatel-Lucent completes first 800MHz live LTE call
NETWORKING FIRM Alcatel-Lucent has reported it successfully completed the first data call on a live LTE network using the 800MHz spectrum band set aside as part of the European Digital Dividend (EDD).
The call was made from Alcatel-Lucent's 4G/LTE research centre in Stuttgart, Germany and involved transmitting high definition video streaming between two devices.
The company reckons this takes it another step closer to a full LTE roll out in Europe. But that will become possible only once all, or at least the majority, of European countries actually free up the needed spectrum and allocate it to providers for use in LTE communications.
Germany is quick off the mark on this front, and is expecting to auction a range of frequencies, including the 800MHz spectrum band, by the middle of next year.
"This is a major breakthrough on our path to become the first vendor to offer a commercial solution for the 'Digital Dividend' spectrum," said Ken Wirth, president of LTE/4G solutions at Alcatel-Lucent.
"Our goal is to quickly and effectively support operators in their plans to further enhance the availability of broadband services all over the region, so we adapted our LTE solution to the 800MHz frequency band quite early on and we are now working with customers on field trials."
Being a fairly low frequency, LTE at 800MHz is particularly well suited for deployments in rural areas, as it has a good balance of range and capacity. It is generally considered to be a good complement to 2.6GHz spectrum LTE deployments in denser and more built up urban environments. µ
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rural usually means spread out over a wide area with limited electricity (or places to site a cell).
So if they can reduce the costs by using less cells, and these cells also reach a greater distance, then they can lower the cost. Less cells, greater coverage means more customers per cell.
Even if the total data throughput is lower, having a reasonable internet speed is and range at a lower cost are probably more important factors. With less customers on each cell, the lower data throughput might not matter as much.
That's how it looks to me, but I'm not an expert so might have this wrong.
So which Einstein at LTE shot the statement that Low Freq (800MHz LTE) is for Rural.
"Being a fairly low frequency, LTE at 800MHz is particularly well suited for deployments in rural areas, as it has a good balance of range and capacity."
Low freq has less bandwidth but travel large distance and has high penetration through walls. High freq packs more data/bandwidth/waves per sec but signal can NOT propagate farther than low-freq, also high freq has less penetration through walls. think of u see a wall's cross-section, too many wave-peaks (high freq) trying to pass through cross-section at same time (think friction here). low freq will be like one snake-like wave passing through.
Though high freq face Urban structures resistance the Bandwidth race has pushed for more cell-sites to tackle penetration/range issue.