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LTE is the name for a mobile network standard currently under development that is in a class beyond what is available today.

"The only thing we know for sure is that new applications will be introduced and that many of today's operators will rely on becoming strong players in the data communications area. For that, Ericsson provides this as an evolution of our existing deliveries into our customers' networks," he says.

LTE is being developed by the 3GPP (Third-Generation Partnership Project) and the standard is expected to be ready this year. Ericsson, however, is already demonstrating LTE prototypes with data rates well above 100Mbps and plans to have standard-compliant equipment deployed by 2009.

With such high data rates end users will enjoy super-fast download speeds, explains Mikael Bäck, head of WCDMA Radio Networks at Ericsson.

"For the ordinary person LTE will mean access to the same kinds of services that you get with today's internet and telephony, but more conveniently, with higher data rates, shorter delays and so on," he says. "So anything from voice-over-IP to gaming and video services will work better than you are used to."

Bäck says Ericsson's LTE products are backwards compatible with earlier-generation products, meaning Ericsson customers will be able to upgrade their existing networks efficiently and cost effectively.

"We know from our experience in introducing new technologies, such as 3G, that it's important that you have connections to the existing systems," he says. "This gives operators the opportunity of launching a new system technology much earlier, since the ever-so-important service coverage is provided with the exiting system. Furthermore, it enables reuse of equipment. Many operators tell us that they want their next-generation system to be an evolutionary step.

They want an upgrade of what they have, otherwise it's very cumbersome for them."

Bäck says that the natural step for operators using WCDMA is HSPA Evolved, then LTE. However, if the operator is running out of capacity or wants to provide higher bit rates, then LTE can be used as an overlay network on another frequency to increase the overall capacity and peak rates in certain areas. Narrower LTE carriers can, for example, also be introduced in legacy frequency bands such as 900MHz so that 2G traffic can be migrated to LTE.

Bäck says LTE will work on all the licensed frequency bands - from 450MHz up to 2.5GHz. "It will work both on frequency-division duplexing (FDD) and time-division duplexing (TDD) bands and therefore it will coexist well with existing standards," he says.

Ericsson demonstrated LTE, at 144Mpbs, at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. Using a live system, Ericsson showed customers that it is able to provide a bit pipe large enough for video-conferencing and HDTV applications, and to allow fast file-downloading.

Ewaldsson says: "What I wanted operators to take away (from the demonstration) was that there is strong industry support to evolve current HSPA deployment into the next step. We are catering for types of applications that will exist in the home of the future, for instance.

"We can offer operators something that is extremely powerful, has the highest possible quality and is very simple to implement and use."