ZTE and Swedish carrier Hi3G announced what they call the world's first commercial FDD/TDD dual-mode LTE network has gone live in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo.
The two companies announced a deal in March to cover all of Sweden. Hi3G, facing stiff competition in Sweden, will be able to offer data speeds of up to 100 Mbps, much faster than its LTE rivals.
Hi3G owns 50 MHz of TDD (Time Division Duplex) spectrum in Sweden and 25 MHz of TDD spectrum in Denmark. Most operators in Europe are sitting on a significant amount of vacant TDD spectrum that was attached to their 3G licenses when they acquired them. Unpaired spectrum wasn't useful then, but it is now in the mobile broadband world.
By launching two versions of LTE--the TDD and FDD (Frequency Division Duplex)--Hi3G should be able to maximize data throughput because data traffic benefits from the asymmetric TDD spectrum since operators can allocate more bandwidth to the downlink.
The ZTE equipment is based upon its Uni-RAN Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology, which enables Hi3G to support a variety of mobile standards and frequency bands. The radio technology should also enable Hi3G to upgrade this new base station technology by downloading software updates. Moreover, ZTE is supplying additional 3G equipment for the operator's 900 MHz and 2.1 GHz existing network, together with the dual-mode LTE network.
For more:
- see this C114 article
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