NSN CEO: Our LTE technology is ‘just better’ than Ericsson’s

BARCELONA, Spain--Nokia Siemens Networks CEO Ranjeev Suri said that independent testing of the company's LTE network in Sweden showed it provided consistently faster speeds than Ericsson's LTE network in the country. When questioned as to the reason NSN's network provided faster speeds, Suri contended that "it's just better technology."

Click here to see the results of Signals Research’s testing of NSN’s LTE network vs. Ericsson’s.

During NSN's media presentation here at the Mobile World Congress trade show, the company said Signals Research testing showed that NSN's LTE network in Gothenburg, Sweden, for TeliaSonera provided reliably faster uplink and downlink speeds than Ericsson's network for the carrier in Stockholm. According to Signals Research, NSN's LTE network in Gothenburg provided average downlink speeds of 39.3 Mbps while Ericsson's network in Stockholm provided average downlink speeds of 26.9 Mbps. According to the research, NSN's average uplink speed was 21.2 Mbps while Ericsson's was 14.2 Mbps.

Suri said the results were not due to faster backhaul connections or any other outside factor. He said that both companies' LTE implementations adhere to the standard, and that NSN's implementation simply resulted in faster uplink and downlink speeds.

Although Ericsson did not address the results of Signals Research's findings directly, the company did take issue with NSN's conclusions. In response to questions on the topic, Ericsson's Thomas Noren, head of the company's LTE business, discussed the findings of a similar test of LTE in Sweden conducted by Ericsson. The company tested its network against the LTE networks of two other, unnamed vendors, and found that Ericsson's LTE network provided more reliable connections and faster downloads and uploads.

TeliaSonera in Sweden selected NSN and Ericsson last year for its LTE rollout in the country; the operator became the first in the world to turn on a commercial LTE network.

Despite NSN's findings, it seems TeliaSonera remains satisfied with Ericsson as a supplier. In January the carrier named Ericsson and Huawei as suppliers for its LTE deployment in Norway.

In other NSN news, the company said it has largely recovered from a turbulent 2010 and now expects to be profitable in 2011. Suri said NSN continues to hold talks for a possible investment in the company by a private equity firm, but he did not provide details. He also said NSN continues to expect to close on its acquisition of Motorola's infrastructure business sometime in the first quarter--despite a legal challenge to the deal by Huawei.

Meantime, Ericsson, too, provided some insight into its operations during its own media presentation here. The company's CEO, Hans Vestberg, said Ericsson expects 7 billion to 8 billion mobile subscriptions by 2015--more than the number of people living on Earth. He also said the company expects 5 billion mobile broadband subscriptions by 2016, though he did not specify what exactly a "mobile broadband" subscriber is. Finally, he said the company expects the data generated by the world's smartphones to equal the data generated by the world's PCs by 2016.

For more:
- see this NSN release

Related Articles:
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Article updated Feb. 15 to include comments from Ericsson