Ericsson: New Supplier To Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Co. For LTE Deployment

Long Term Evolution (LTE) access is the kind of thing that's becoming increasingly prized in the mobile arena. Between better data connections to voice service, LTE is rapidly becoming the platform of choice in the United States, and beyond as well. In fact, Taiwan is looking to bring in LTE connectivity throughout the country, and its turning to Ericsson to help with the supply end and make that happen.

Ericsson landed the arrangement from the current leading operator in Taiwan, Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd., and includes several important points of supply within the wider system, including the Radio Access Network (RAN) to cover the country's most populated areas, as well as the Evolved Packet Core, including IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) issues, the Mobility Management Entity involved, and the Evolved Packet Gateway for SSR 8020.

The development won't be completely new, however, as Taiwan is already running a mobile penetration rate of 127 percent. Nearly 80 percent of subscribers are already on a 3G service, which makes things a little easier on the operation. Though it likely went easier on Chunghwa Telecom, knowing that Ericsson networks currently serve about 50 percent of the world's known supply of LTE smartphone traffic, and led to Lin Kuo-Feng, Chunghwa Telecom's mobile business group president, noting that “Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. has a long and rewarding relationship with Ericsson. Ericsson is awarded our LTE tender as main LTE supplier in recognition of this, and the fact that Ericsson is the clear leader for LTE around the world.”

Ericsson seemed likewise pleased with the arrangement, as expressed by Ericsson's head of region North East Asia, Jan Signell, who said “This contract represents a significant deal for Ericsson as it further strengthens our partnership with Chunghwa Telecom and is testament to our customer commitment and our global LTE leadership. Alongside this, Taiwan is a hugely exciting market for mobile network development and innovation as mobile users here are passionate adopters of new technology.”

Indeed, Ericsson has already made its point, and in a pretty big way, too. Recent reports from Ovum suggested that Ericsson was one of just four top vendors that could bring in both sequential revenue growth as well as year-over-year revenue growth when it comes to global optical networking spending. Add to this its presence on the LTE front overall and it's not hard to see why Chunghwa Telecom went in that direction. With LTE becoming a progressively more vital development in terms of mobile smartphone connectivity—VoLTE, regular connectivity, the potential use of such connections in an Internet of Things setting to control household and business systems by remote as well as the increasing overall connectivity posed by the bring your own device (BYOD) doctrine being put in place at many businesses—it's easy to see why companies are turning to a market leader like Ericsson to have new installations take place.

The increasing demands on networks all over the world for business and personal use alike, as well as the rapidly increasing numbers of mobile devices connecting to these networks, is requiring some major restructuring efforts in terms of providing connections. LTE is a great start down this road, and it's clear that Ericsson is leading the way in getting LTE connections to mobile users.