Hong Kong's CSL ready to launch LTE this year

Mobile operator's executives share details of ongoing LTE trials, say LTE devices are 'almost there'.
Hong Kong mobile operator CSL will be ready to launch LTE before the end of 2010, top executives at the company told journalists

in Hong Kong on Thursday.
"Sometime towards the end of 2010 we will be ready to deploy [LTE]," said chief technology officer Christian Daigneault. However,

the operator has not yet named a commercial launch date. CSL is currently carrying out LTE trials in Hong Kong.
"[We have] 40 cell sites where LTE is operational now... We will be deploying about 60 [during the trial]," Daigneault said.
However, the company has yet to ascertain how many sites it will need for a full launch. It is carrying out studies to see how much

it will be able to rely on its existing HSPA+ network for data in certain areas of the city. "We are looking at a hotspot strategy;

where we have high-density traffic we will deploy LTE," Daigneault said. The company is testing LTE in both the 2.6-GHz and 1800 MHz bands. "Although we intend to deploy 1800 later [than 2.6 GHz], we are testing it now," Daigneault said.
"[The] devices are almost there," he said, noting that some vendors can already offer commercial LTE dongles for mobile data.
CSL is testing dongles with a number of different vendors. "We will be selecting the commercial dongle in the next few months,"

Daigneault said. CSL already offers high-speed data services in Hong Kong, having launched its Next G network - using the same brand as that of its majority shareholder Telstra in March 2009. The network uses HSPA+ in the 900 MHz band to

offer good indoor coverage and downlink speeds of up to 21 Mbps. CSL plans to launch a 42-Mbps service later this year.
"We intended to replicate the Australian success," said Tarek Robbiati, CEO of CSL.
"The challenge in Hong Kong was slightly different. We needed to replace our entire network infrastructure with a new vendor," he said.
In March 2008 CSL contracted ZTE to build the new network, replacing previous equipment supplier Nokia Siemens Networks.

Key to the decision to go with ZTE was the vendor's Software Defined Radio (SDR) capability, which enables operators to upgrade

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