EU Antes $25M for LTE R&D

Sticking a flag in the 4G battleground, the European Union will invest up to $25 million in research and development on the next generation of wireless broadband, known as “Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced.”

LTE Advanced will build on the LTE networks currently being built out by operators in East Asia, Western Europe, and North America. Offering download speeds of up to 1Gb/sec, “LTE Advanced is the first version of the mobile standard that might actually match the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)'s requirements for wireless 4G networks,” reported Dan Jones of Unstrung.

A leading force in the drive toward GSM, which is now the dominant cellular voice technology worldwide, Western Europe has ceded some of the innovation ground surrounding wireless broadband to East Asia. The new LTE Advanced funding is seen as a push to regain some of that edge.