Executives at Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) have expressed their surprise at the demand from operators to trial LTE. The company, which revealed it had a total of 30 LTE trials underway, said it was "unbelievable how the momentum was growing."
Thorsten Robrecht, Nokia Siemens' head of LTE product management, said the company was in talks with 15 major operators regarding LTE deployments, adding, "there are big customers which I hope to get very soon under contract."
Last week, NSN announced that the Finnish mobile operator Elisa had awarded the company a contract to deliver LTE equipment for the first phase of its network which would provide coverage for part of the Finnish capital, Helsinki.
Elisa, one of Europe's smaller operators, said that it planned to open the service to the public when there were more LTE devices available. However, the operator has not yet committed to a supplier for its country-wide roll-out, and competition is likely to be fierce with no guarantee NSN would automatically be awarded the contract.
Last week, NSN also announced that it had integrated TD-LTE into its existing mobile platforms including base stations and core networks. In an effort to impress Chinese operators, the company demonstrated the industry's first concurrent TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE network.
"The shift from TD-SCDMA and WiMAX to TD-LTE, will be a gradual process, thereby making it important that the two technologies co-exist with each other," said Robrecht.
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