Alcatel Lucent is gunning hard for the LTE market, emboldened by its contract wins with Verizon Wireless. The company argues that it offers a true end-to-end service for operators, from the IMS, through the EPC, to next generation backhaul, and finally the front end. It says this differentiates it from other providers in the market.
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A presentation from the company claimed that it has been involved in 45 LTE trials to date, with 50% of those with companies that are not existing LTE customers. And Al Lu is also supporting Verizon in its roll out across the USA.
It is also touting its ng connect programme, through which it is working with a set of partners to develop a set of pre-tested and pre-integrated services and applications optimized for LTE. Ken Wirth, head of Alcatel Lucent’s LTE programe, said that the benefit for operators of the programme is that they will know that they have services that have been pre-certified and tested for LTE.
Operators need to be able to build business models to support their 4G investment, Wirth said. Having a centre of tested apps and services, from in-car systems to healthcare will help them do that.
But Tommy Ljunggren, technical lead at TeliaSonera mobile, said that he preferred to work in an open way with partners, referencing his company’s work with Spotify. He also said that no one company provides best of breed across the board – negating the possible advantage for a company positioning itseld as end-to-end, like Al-Lu. TeliaSonera uses Ericsson for its core equipment, but is using Nokia Siemens as well as Ericsson for its radio network.
Valerie Layan, VP Wireless Soltuions and Marketing, EMEA, Alcatel Lucent, said that operators needed to be able to offer added value, through context, control and communications to “over the top” providers. This is the smart pipe model for operators, she said, and one that companies like Alcatel Lucent can aid by enabling operators to be able to offer such capabilities to over the top providers.