BARCELONA, Spain -- Long Term Evolution is the new rage at Mobile World Congress, the latest incarnation of the GSM Association´s annual European extravaganza. While 3G and mobile data services have dominated the GSM event in the past, 4G has definitely come to the fore with all of the major vendors offering at least some kind of demo of LTE.

Nortel Networks and Motorola both had live radio access networks running at the conference, while Qualcomm announced it would begin shipping multimode LTE-CDMA and LTE-UMTS chipsets in 2009. Nokia Siemens, however, took the prize for audacity. It announced its first commercial LTE product--despite the fact that the LTE standard is still a year away from being finalized.

Nokia Siemens unveiled a UMTS Flexi base station that it said is future-proof for LTE. Mark Slater, vice president of marketing for North America, said that while not fully finalized, the standard is far enough along that NSN can begin building the radio access gear. Furthermore, Slater said, Nokia is using a true software-defined radio solution that will allow operators to remotely upload the LTE software when it is ready. There will still be site work necessary: Multiple antenna configurations will need to be installed, and the LTE network will have to be planned differently than a UMTS network, Slater said, but where a UMTS network and an LTE network share the same site, the same infrastructure can be used.

The actual LTE software won’t be available for field trials until 2009, so NSN is on the same track to commercialize the technology as other vendors. But Slater said its upgradeable platform will give it an edge. Carriers aren’t all waiting for LTE. Many are still deploying UMTS networks and will want a solution they can migrate.

"Nokia Siemens Networks has been doing live air demonstrations on LTE since 2006 and field drive testing since late 2007," Slater said. "We have a solid grip on LTE technology and the readiness of the standards from an implementation point of view."