NSN and Alcatel-Lucent on Wednesday said they signed a major TD-LTE deal with Sprint, the American telecom operator.
The financial details of the 4G equipment deal are not disclosed.
Updated: Samsung is also one of the key vendor of the project.
Sprint’s choice of TD LTE for the network expansion will be the first use of the technology in a national deployment in North America. Recently, Sprint acquired 2.5GHz spectrum in the U.S.
TD-LTE is growing in India and China. NSN works with Airtel in India to roll out 4G on TD-LTE technology. Alcatel-Lucent is one of the key vendors of China Mobile for rolling out 4G.
NSN said it will implement its TDD LTE Radio solution with the latest LTE-Advanced-ready software capabilities and NetAct network management system. NSN will also provide professional services.
Alcatel-Lucent said Sprint is deploying Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE solution, which includes its lightRadio Radio Access Network (RAN), antennas and cabling and a complete set of professional services such as radio frequency (RF) design, system integration and optimization, site acquisition and construction.
Sprint Capex during 2013 will be around $8 billion with special focus on 4G. During the third quarter of 2013, Sprint Capex touched $1,841 million and $5,550 million during the first nine months.Sprint has launched 4G LTE services in 230 markets across the country and expects to provide 200 million people with 4G LTE by the end of 2013.
Bob Azzi, senior vice president of Network Operations for Sprint, said the telecom operator has worked with Alcatel-Lucent throughout the Network Vision and initial 4G LTE rollout.
“NSN is an ideal vendor for our deployment, which will provide our customers with increased speeds and capacity in densely populated cities,” Azzi added.
At present, NSN, which is focusing mobile broadband solutions, is demonstrating a downlink throughput of 1.3 Gbps at Sprint’s facility in Burlingame. NSN is using its commercial Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station, which includes a TDD LTE 8-pipe radio module for the lab demonstration.
