Partner prepares for LTE deployment (Israel)

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The preparatory work for the deployment of Long Term Evolution (LTE) services has been started by Israeli mobile network operator Partner Communications. A tender is supposed to be held by Partner for proposals on an upgrade to its existing core network. Besides a tender would also be held for an additional network components that would enable it to launch commercial 4G services as soon as it received the requisite frequencies.

Israeli Defence Force is expected to release fourth-generation spectrum by early 2012. 900MHz band of spectrum currently held by Partner is also resolved to be used by the operator. At present, 2100MHz band is used by Partner for its third generation services. Vendors other than its current main supplier Ericsson will be considered by the firm. Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent have all been mooted as possible vendors of interest.

According to an official at Partner, NSN and Huawei are companies that have shown that they have impressive solutions for rolling out an LTE network, alongside Ericsson and the company will upgrade its core network to IP so that it can unite voice and data, and the firm will upgrade the network to speeds of 21Mbps and 42Mbps in the future.