February 15, 2010 - Alcatel-Lucent today announced that it has successfully made the first 4G calls in the framework of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) lab tests Telefónica is conducting in Latin America.

With these tests, Telefónica is analysing – in a real environment - the maturity and benefits of the LTE mobile broadband technology. The first services were delivered in Telefónica’s labs, using Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end LTE solution, including base stations, transmission equipment, Evolved Packet Core (EPC), as well as professional design & integration services – in combination with devices from LG Electronics.

In a second phase when the field tests will start, the 700 MHz and 2,6 GHz frequencies will be used to assess LTE’s performance in terms of coverage and capacity - offering a new user experience and supporting the delivery of new mobile multimedia applications, such as high-definition video streaming, mobile gaming, high-speed file transfers and video conferencing.

“LTE deployments bring a user experience and quality of service far superior to the current 3G/3.5G networks,” says Ken Wirth, president of LTE/4G Solutions for Alcatel-Lucent. “In addition, theyaccommodate lower costs of ownership thanks to LTE’s advanced quality of service (QoS) and technical features such as self-organising networks (SON) that will be analyzed by Telefónica as well.”