LG Electronics just announced that it would demonstrate its almost market-ready Long Term Evolution (LTE) - a top contender to become the standard technology for 4G mobile networks - in cooperation with Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona, Spain.

The wireless LTE technology LG will showcase this year is two to three times faster than the wired technology it demonstrated last year. With download speeds of up to 60 Mbps and uploads at up to 40 Mbps, this LTE technology is fully capable of real time high definition video streaming, with no choppiness or buffer time. It is fully six times faster than HSDPA (High Speed Download packet Access) and eight times faster than HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). This means that phones built for LTE networks could download a 700 megabyte movie in 90 seconds or a three megabyte MP3 file in 0.4 second.

The technology demonstration will use an LTE handset platform developed by LG and base station technology from Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel. This is not a laboratory simulation and will demonstrate how close to commercialization LTE is. The demonstration will use real mobile phone frequency ranges and components that can be further miniaturized for use in actual handsets. It will also show how LTE can be used in real-life situations like video conferencing, uploading user generated content to the Internet and streaming security camera video.

LTE is likely to become the next standard for high speed wireless networks, as it can be added to existing WCDMA and HSDPA networks without the need to build additional infrastructure.

To further promote the speedy commercialization of LTE technology LG has joined the Next Generation Mobile Network, an association dedicated to the creation of networks suitable for the competitive delivery of mobile broadband services and cost-efficient eventual replacement of existing networks.