The first LTE 450 industry meeting was held in London with the aim to make the LTE 450 industry chain become mature. More than 20 representatives from a wide range of mobile industry organizations, including LTE 450 operators, regulators, chipset and device manufacturers, and other industry partners participated in the meeting. The attendees included representatives from the Brazilian Ministry of Communications, Qualcomm, Huawei, GCT, Sequans, Altair, Gemtek, Xemex and 450MHz operators from all over the world.
During the meeting, nearly 10 commercially available LTE 450 devices were displayed, including indoor and outdoor CPE, MiFi and chipsets. Huawei introduced its latest LTE 450 end-to-end solution, and Qualcomm announced it would have a new LTE 450 chipset to go to market by February 2014.
Representatives from the Brazilian Ministry of Communications discussed urgent requirements for deploying LTE on the 450MHz spectrum. In Brazil, a nation-wide mobile broadband network has become a national priority.
Telecom Italia, the leading mobile operator in Brazil, introduced the 3GPP standards related to LTE 450 and an accompanying LTE 450 development path.
During an open discussion, attendees agreed that the success factors for LTE 450 need to be agreed upon, such as price points for affordable devices, workably flexible business models, and its potential for adoption in machine-to-machine connectivity. “This meeting proves the technology chain is complete,” said Igor Virker, Chairman of the 450 Alliance.