The rural areas of Germany without access to broadband will be the first to benefit from Deutsche Telekom's decision to deploy LTE in the 800MHz band to these 'whitespot' regions.
The company said that, while it had already started to trial LTE in urban areas, later this year it would extend 800MHz LTE coverage to districts without access to fixed or mobile broadband services.
The company's technology director, Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, said that Deutsche Telekom (DT) was pushing ahead with LTE so its subscribers could gain from advanced services. "In a first step, LTE will enable broadband access in rural areas, where fast access to the internet has so far been unavailable."
DT has named NSN as the LTE equipment provider, which will see the vendor supplying hardware, software and services required to set up and maintain the LTE radio network across Germany.
Jacobfeuerborn added that NSN would also be responsible for handling the implementation and maintenance elements of the project to ensure a rapid rollout without interruption to existing 2G and 3G services.
DT has also selected NSN as a future LTE supplier for its global requirements. The operator confirmed that NSN, along with Juniper Networks and Insta DefSec, would be installing high-level security systems into the LTE network from the start of installation.
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