NSN and COTA Launch Spanish TD-LTE

Finnish vendor Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has partnered with WIMAX Online and Spain’s Consortium of Advanced Telecommunications (COTA) to deploy first Time Division Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) service in Spain.

The commercial launch would be by the end of the year.

As a part of a pilot project undertaken before the commercial launch, it has completed what it considers the first Single Radio Access Network (RAN) TD-LTE project in South Europe, the first Band 38 TD-LTE deployment in Spain, and one of the first 4G networks in South Europe.

The TD-LTE service is in the 2.6GHz band.

The end-to-end TD-LTE service is based on NSN’s energy-efficient Flexi Multiradio Base Station technology. NSN’s partner Athonet has provided core network components for COTA and together TD-LTE service has been brought to Murcia, Spain, making it one of Europe’s earliest deployments of 2.6 GHz TDD technology.

The agreement between COTA and NSN also includes NSN’s professional services.

In September 2011, COTA was awarded spectrum in the 2.6GHz band for a 10MHz block covering the Murcia region by paying $ 217 million. WIMAX Online is expected to offer services over COTA’s network under a wholesale access deal.

Miguel Araujo, head of customer teams for Spain and Portugal at NSN, said they understood that the first priority for COTA was to provide best-in-class customer experience for the end users. He added that they put their focus and attention in building flexible Single RAN capacity to meet the growing demand for broadband services in the region of Murcia.

COTA is the leading audio-visual telecom operator in the Spanish southeastern region of Murcia, providing IP-transport and broadcasting of Digital TV as well as FM radio services to both public and private broadcasters.

WIMAX Online is a leading regional WISP, serving customers mostly located in rural and remote areas in the region of Murcia, providing telephony and Internet access.

Athonet provides a compact, distributed, high-performance and transportable Lite Mobile Core Network for UMTS/HSPA, LTE, Wi-Fi and CDMA, named PriMo.

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