Alcatel-Lucent and West Central Wireless, a subsidiary of the Central Texas Telephone Cooperative, have signed an agreement to provide LTE service in rural areas of Texas, USA. Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will enable West Central Wireless to launch new 4G LTE service. West Central Wireless intends to launch its own 4G LTE service in late 2012 with LTE dongles. Access via 4G LTE smartphones and tablet devices will be available later.

West Central Wireless will open up its core network under a new ‘network hosting’ agreement to offer other regional operators the opportunity to deliver broadband services in rural communities. Opening up part of this ‘packet core network’ will allow operator to enable other regional service provides to accelerate new services as the agreement eliminates the need for investment in packet core networks of their own.

"West Central Wireless is a trusted provider of hosted services, having offered similar agreements for AMPS, TDMA, CDMA and GSM technologies. We are pleased to be able to leverage Alcatel-Lucent’s expertise to deliver new services that meet the mobile broadband needs of our customers, while offering a significant opportunity for other service providers who don’t have the capital to invest in a full core network, to do the same.," said Mike Higgins, Jr., CEO of Central Texas Telephone Cooperative.