Early last month, seven key infrastructure vendors banded together to establish a framework for predictable intellectual property licensings rights for LTE. The companies that participated in the deal were: Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson. Noticeably absent from the list was Nortel. Today Nortel came out on its own and announced that it would publish its royalty rates for its LTE "standards-essential" patents: The company published a competitive handset royalty rate of about one percent, which is subject to some terms. Nortel expects that removing that unknown will help foster business cases and reduce early hesitations about deploying LTE.
"Coupled with the cost benefits of next-generation LTE technologies, we think moves like this by patent holders could help provide handset suppliers with IPR cost predictability," Nortel's VP of marketing and strategy for carrier networks, Scott Wickware said in a statement. "That in turn will hopefully encourage early adoption of LTE and a healthy ecosystem from which service providers can build a strong business case for LTE deployment."
For more on Nortel's LTE play:
- read this Nortel LTE royalty press release