August 24, 2009 | Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that it has reached a critical milestone in the development of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband solution –- following certification from the U.S.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Alcatel-Lucent is now shipping its 700 MHz LTE base stations to service providers in the United States. With this achievement Alcatel-Lucent becomes the first vendor to have FCC-certified LTE base stations available, a key requirement for sales in the U.S. market.

To meet the needs of service providers in the U.S., Alcatel-Lucent has developed a high performance compact LTE base station designed to help operators launch services quickly to take advantage of their recent investments in “digital dividend” spectrum bands.

“The fact that we’re already shipping 700 MHz gear is a strong indicator of the maturity of Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE offerings and highlights the rapid progress we are making in bringing LTE solutions to market,” said Mike Iandolo, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireless Networks Product Division. “This achievement also demonstrates the central role Alcatel-Lucent is playing in wireless industry, in terms of the development and implementation of the LTE standards.”

These new compact LTE radios are a key component of Alcatel-Lucent’s Converged Radio Access Network (RAN) offerings and further expand Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end LTE solution. Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE solution complies with the latest 3GPP standards and incorporates innovations from Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs such as Self-Organizing and Self-Optimizing (SON) capabilities that facilitate the rapid introduction of services and ensure that the network is dynamically optimized.

Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE base stations offer a superior level of integration with unique MIMO- optimised all-in-one RF modules, thus avoiding traditional losses in feeders and cables. This creates a lower power consumption profile, making them a great option for operators looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

Additionally, service providers benefit by deploying LTE in the “digital dividend” spectrum bands, which can require fewer sites to cover a particular area, thus reducing overall environmental impact.