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Optus still evaluating LTE

Optus has said that it will conduct more trials of Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology before committing to offering the services to customers, despite competitors Vodafone and Telstra announcing plans to bring in 4G services in by year's end.
Written by Josh Taylor, Contributor

Optus has said that it will conduct more trials of Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology before committing to offering the services to customers, despite competitors Vodafone and Telstra announcing plans to bring in 4G services in by year's end.

Vodafone today said that it plans to begin offering LTE services to consumers later this year as the company embarks on its national network upgrade. This follows on from Telstra's announcement in February that it will have LTE services up and running in a number of metropolitan and regional centres by the end of 2011.

Despite Vodafone jumping onto the 4G bandwagon, rival telco Optus stuck to its statement from February that said the company was still trialling LTE, and could not say when such services would be available to its customers.

"Optus continues to evaluate the optimum timing for rolling out commercial LTE services," Optus told ZDNet Australia. "A major consideration is the widespread availability of quality LTE devices in the appropriate spectrum bands."

"Phase 2 of Optus' LTE trial commenced earlier this year in the 1800 MHz band with the pilot trial area in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs," Optus said. "The trial is looking at a wider operational area for testing, as well as performance under load and the data interworking with the 3G and 2G networks with LTE."

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