What the hell is L.T.E.?

LTE is actually the hottest buzz-acronym in the mobile industry.
Those attending the different Congress were bombarded by messages from a variety of vendors (and some operators) saying the time for LTE, or long-term evolution, is drawing ever closer.
These last months more and more industry leaders talk about L.T.E. and describing their roadmap for it.

Is it a good thing for you? Don't know what will change in your life? what L.T.E. mean? etc...

First:
L.T.E. mean Long Term Evolution

Second:
Long term evolution of what?
of your actual UMTS network (to be more accurate, of the 3GPP radio technology)

Third:
When?
Evolution of the 3G Mobile System started with the RAN Evolution Work Shop, 2 - 3 November 2004 in Toronto, Canada.
L.T.E. should be ready for commercial deployment in late 2009

Fourth:
Who?
The Work Shop was open to all interested organizations, members and non members of 3GPP.
Operators, manufacturers and research institutes presented more than 40 contributions with views and proposals on the evolution of the Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN).

List of all 3GPP members here

Fifth:
Why?
To improve the UMTS mobile phone standard to cope with future requirements.
Goals include:
- Improving efficiency
- Lowering costs
- Improving services
- Making use of new spectrum opportunities
- Better integration with other open standards.

The LTE project is not a standard, but it will result in the new evolved release 8 of the UMTS standard, including mostly or wholly extensions and modifications of the UMTS system. The architecture that will result from this work is called EPS (Evolved Packet System) and comprehends E-UTRAN (Evolved UTRAN) on the access side and EPC (Evolved Packet Core) on the core side.

Sixth:
How?
It's existing 3G network improvment.
Motorola has actually developed a retrofit kit to allow an LTE carrier to be installed in Verizon's existing GSM base stations by using the same physical package, this will help conserve floor space and optimize power consumption.
Ericsson also demonstrated at MWC (Barcelona) what it claimed to be the world’s first end-to-end phone call enabled by LTE. The Swedish supplier says its LTE network equipment supports multi-user data rates of up to 160Mbps per cell, using handheld mobile devices developed by Ericsson Mobile Platforms.
But it has it's limitation, the vast majority of base stations (the big carrier operators' antennas) that exist today in the world of UMTS or GSM are not upgradeable and hardware can not be reused.

Seventh:
What will this mean for you?
- Its what you'll probably call the 4G network (mean 4th Generation)
- High speed download and Upload (Peack @ 100/50 Mbps DL/UL)
- Real Time Mobile Video (i.e.: Video Configuration/ Video streaming/ TV/ ...)
- Place-Shifting (i.e.: Digital locker)
- Mobile Advertising
- Internet Commerce Transactions improved
- Faster A-GPS applications (GPS that use base stations instead of satelites)
- etc...

Eight:
Dominant Mobile Broadband Technology roadmap

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