Alcatel-Lucent has a lot riding on LTE. That is both a business reality and a useful pun as the company has taken to the highway in the Transformation Express, a 53-foot trailer with four walls of spectacular graphics inside that provide a visual representation of 4G applications and network controls at work.
The Transformation Express was parked behind the Alcatel-Lucent facility in Naperville, Ill., last week where Ken Wirth, president of LTE Solutions and Mischa Jampolsky, technical innovation manager for Alcatel-Lucent, demonstrated some of the devices coming soon that LTE enables and how their network responds in real-time to even the most bandwidth-hungry applications. One use case had seven independent streams of video running simultaneously on a laptop. One was high-definition running approximately 3Mbps while the others were running at 200 to 300 Kbps. They could be swapped with the primary window, automatically converting to HD with a short spike in traffic than operators will be able to monetize.
Alcatel-Lucent’s ngConnect program brings together device and application developers in the entertainment, media, gaming and device companies to build applications that try not to be so bandwidth hungry, but high-definition video can only be compressed so far. The LTE network the company is launching with Verizon before year’s end in 25 major cities will handle some pretty sophisticated services and applications if the company’s tour bus provides real-world examples. The bandwidth-monitoring devices running throughout the demonstration, which included the car of the future, connected high-definition cameras and multiple video applications running simultaneously, suggests it does.
It isn’t just about base stations for Alcatel-Lucent this time around. The company is pushing an entire infrastructure overlay that includes the LTE base station, IP backhaul, enhanced packet core, IMS for service creation, voice-over-IP and the professional and managed services to implement it and maintain it. It has 50 trials underway around the globe with one version of deployment or another.
They’re also offering solutions to support the business and quality aspects of an LTE deployment. In March, the company launched the Alcatel-Lucent 9900 Wireless Network Guardian (WNG), which provides mobile operators with real-time visibility into the relationship between network element performance and end-user quality of experience.
At the same time, it also enhanced its policy management offerings. The 5780 Dynamic Services Controller, which provides the Policy Charging and Rules Function (PCRF) in the network, optimizes network resources and supports the offering of personalized choice for subscribers in both 3G and LTE environments.
Wirth said Alcatel-Lucent has a back end system that pre-tests the entire network including the devices that will work on it at launch. “So when I tell Dick Lynch, CTO of Verizon Wireless, that this network is commercial, it is. It’s been tested. He’ll know that when they open up the network, it will all work, including the devices,” he said.
