Everything Everywhere (EE) and BT have agreed to cooperate on the U.K.'s first LTE trial involving consumers.
The operators said the trial will begin in September and last for at least three months. Perhaps most importantly, the trial will be the first to combine fixed and wireless broadband technologies.
The trial will involve 100 mobile and 100 fixed-line users in rural parts of South West England, has been given permission to test LTE as a shared fixed and mobile broadband platform. EE confirmed that it will use 2x10 MHz configuration of 800 MHz test spectrum to understand whether LTE had the capability to provide a long-term complementary solution to fixed broadband technology where current download speeds remained a problem for remote rural users.
EE CEO Tom Alexander said in a statement: "We strongly believe that by sharing our network and mobile services in this way, we can make a valuable contribution to the economics of rural broadband service."
However, Alexander cautioned that, while LTE was capable of providing speeds of up to 150 Mbps, a more realistic range would be from 2 Mbps to 40 Mbps.
The U.K. government announced that it will auction 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz LTE spectrum next year.
For more:
- see this FierceWirelessEurope article
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