Press Releases

Budapest, April 28, 2014 14:30

Magyar Telekom demonstrated today, jointly with Ericsson, on its test network in Budapest in the framework of a scenic presentation the LTE-Advanced technology, which represents the next stage of Telekom’s current 4G/LTE network and in a few years it may be the pledge of satisfying customer demand that grows globally with an accelerating rate.

Telekom tested today at Telekom’s headquarters in Budapest, jointly with Ericsson, the bandwidth that can be implemented by the LTE-Advanced technology and appears to be inconceivable yet currently. The event was addressed by Magyar Telekom’s Chief Executive Officer Christopher Mattheisen, Chief Technology and IT Officer Walter Goldenits and Valter D’Avino, Ericsson’s head for West and Central Europe, who introduced the innovative development which represents the future of mobile broadband.

Christopher Mattheisen, Magyar Telekom’s Chief Executive Officer said: „We are very happy that we are the first who can introduce, jointly with our partner Ericsson, the LTE-Advanced technology. We are convinced that the 4G/LTE mobile broadband our customers can access already and the next stage of which you familiarized with today is one of the key factors of digital development both in Europe and in Hungary. Our aim is to enhance through our investments the promotion in Hungary of new technologies and advanced services and at the same time it is our responsibility to introduce to broad walks of the population the possibilities offered by state-of-the-art broadband communication and make further steps within the framework of the Partnership cooperation for Digital Hungary established recently with the Government.”

It was exactly one year ago, on April 30, 2010 that Telekom’s and Ericsson’s experts were also the first in Hungary to test the 4th generation 4G/LTE mobile technology, which Telekom made available for its customers as commercial service from January 2012. Today the 4G mobile broadband is available to nearly 45% of the population and by 2015 Telekom plans to increase its outdoor coverage to 80% nationwide.

LTE-Advanced technology

At Telekom’s and Ericsson’s joint demonstration the highest speed available with the LTE-Advanced technology under specific conditions, 250 Mbps was introduced by downloading huge size data packages and broadcasting the super 4K definition video content broadcast by an octocopter (drone) lifting off the ground on site and several external mobile cameras.
The LTE-Advanced technology will enable mobile service providers in the future to make a more efficient use of the spectrums available to them to achieve higher downloading speeds. By means of LTE-Advanced  customers can achieve even higher speed and better user experience even at mass events, for example in stadiums and at festivals, or several customers staying at the same place can perform activities requiring exceptionally high amount of data at a high quality.

50 billion telecommunication connections by 2020

According to one of Ericsson’s study by 2020 the number of telecommunication connections will exceed 50 billion, as the role of wireless man-to-machine and machine-to-machine connections will increase to a considerable extent. Much more devices than today will join the worldwide net and even domestic utilities from the fridge to TV will be able to be accessed via the Internet or even smartphones, while experience sharing will also assume a new meaning. Smart óphones, video cameras and photo cameras from which even HD or later 3D contents can be immediately uploaded to video sharing sites may become widespread.

All this greatly increases the requirements regarding mobile networks. Currently they have to comply with growing market demand by being able, among others, to manage several types of standards (2G, 3G, 4G), the efficient use of the available frequency bands and the optimal sharing of capacity. In the future mobile broadband technologies are expected to increasingly develop into the direction of 4G/LTE, as LTE-Advanced will be able to serve increasingly higher data speeds and capacities through the aggregation of frequency bands. More subsequently the mass and good quality availability of video and broadcasting services will be possible to achieve using the LTE Broadcast technology.

The South-Korean SK Telecom was the first in the world to introduce the commercial service based on the LTE-Advanced technology in Seoul and two other cities. So the technology accounts for being a rarity in our days and for the time being few is the number of tools globally using which one can access the LTE-Advanced network. Samsung introduced to market last summer its Samsung Galaxy 4 LTE-Advanced-enabled version in South Korea and a massive appearance of devices with similar capabilities can be expected subsequently.

For more information on Telekom’s 4G service and its availability visit the corporate website www.telekom.hu.

About Ericsson Hungary

Ericsson Hungary currently employing close to 1,700 people is Hungary’s largest company engaged in telecommunication and IT research, software and hardware development and the chain of education-basic research—applied research—industrial implementation is exemplary in its activity. It is Magyar Telekom’s largest technology supplier in mobile network development and modernizing, and ensures with its market edge solutions the continuous high-standard, safe, cost efficient and energy saving operation of the mobile network. The intellectual centre is a driver, as Magyar Telekom’s strategic partner, through being a direct harbinger of technology developments and solutions, of the types of cooperation that promote the further enhancement of the competitiveness of the company and the industry.

About Magyar Telekom

Magyar Telekom is Hungary’s largest telecommunication service provider, which offers the full range of telecommunication and info-communication technology (ICT) services, including fixed line and mobile phone, data transmission and other than voice-based as well as IT and systems integration services. Magyar Telekom drives to promote through its network investments and diverse activities of innovation the promotion and more intensive use of new digital technologies and ICT solutions. It considers the strengthening of customers’ awareness as being of a key importance and cooperates with its partners in order to have the rate of users of advanced services reach and then exceed the EU average.