European LTE has moved closer to becoming a commercial reality with the announcement from T-Mobile Austria that it has installed an LTE 
base station and is showcasing its high-speed capabilities of over 130Mbps. To further boost the case for LTE, TeliaSonera claims to have achieved a "world's first" by making a broadband Internet connection over a live commercial LTE network in Oslo, Norway.
The demonstration of LTE by T-Mobile Austria is using equipment from Huawei, and according to the Austrian company's CTO, Jim Burke, is the first time a speed of more than 130Mbps over the air interface has been reached, with four modems simultaneously active in a cell. The operator used the launch of this demo to call for the Austrian government to consider the distribution of 2.6GHz frequencies, so it can prepare to launch the technology on a commercial basis.
In Norway, the TeliaSonera subsidiary, NetCom, used a laptop with a 4G modem to demonstrate the performance and connection capabilities of LTE by downloading high-res photos, music, movies and mobile business applications, at a speed quicker than is available over today's fixed Internet. However, no details were supplied by NetCom with regard to actual LTE throughput, although the connection was made using Huawei technology.
For more on this story:
- see this press release from TeliaSonera
- this video of the event
- and these articles from 3G and Telegeography
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