Nokia Siemens Networks Completes First LTE Handover Test

Nokia Siemens Networks, the worldwide leading infrastructure provider, announced on Monday the completion of the first LTE (Long Time Evolution) handover test in the world, which has been made on a commercially available base station and on software fully compliant with standards. According to the company, the new test is aimed at showing whether the LTE handover procedure is being made correctly by both the LTE test terminal and the Nokia Siemens Networks Flexi Multiradio base station.

According to the infrastructure vendor, handover is one of the key features of the mobile radio technology. The newly completed LTE handover test is the first one fully compliant with 3GPP’s March 2009 baseline LTE standard (3GPP is said to be the relevant LTE standards body). The handover in this test has been made between LTE cells of Nokia Siemens Networks’ Flexi Multiradio base station, the company also added.

“Our focus at Nokia Siemens Networks is on commercial hardware and software, not pre-commercial intermediate solutions,” said Marc Rouanne, head of Nokia Siemens Networks’ Radio Access business unit. “We’ve already shipped LTE-capable Flexi Base Station hardware to over 100 customers and this LTE handover on our standards compliant software is another step on the road to the commercial deployment of LTE.“

Nokia Siemens Networks also stated that the handover support was required so as to enable seamless connectivity when the mobile call handling is switched from one mobile cell to another, something that usually occurs when the user is moving. The company also verified handover support on its Evolved Packet Core solution for LTE core networks, such as the Flexi NG and Flexi NS products.

According to the company, the standard compliant LTE network products and terminals are a necessity for the LTE deployments and should offer users the possibility to choose from various products delivered by different vendors. The infrastructure vendor also added that it would sustain the commercial uptake of LTE, offering end-to-end solutions that deliver an easy and cost efficient option to upgrade to LTE.