Alcatel-Lucent is again tinkering on the Isle of Man, announcing today another UMTS trial with Manx Telecom, this time to test spectrum reuse over the 900 MHz cellular bands in Europe.

Over the last six months Alcatel-Lucent and Manx have been testing the propagation and scaling characteristics of UMTS/High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) in rural areas over 900 MHz bands traditionally used for GSM voice coverage. The companies found that the lower frequencies can reduce base station deployments by as much as 60% in the countryside over UMTS networks deployed over the traditional 2.1 GHz European 3G bands. In addition, the lower bands were optimal for penetrating structures, demonstrating 30% better in-building penetration over 2.1 GHz and 40% better for deep building penetration.

Most significantly though, the trials yielded a capacity boost on the 900 MHz bands, achieving as much as 10% higher throughput than a 2.1 GHz network and an overall average capacity increase of 5%. As a bench mark, Alcatel-Lucent ran the new network side-by-side against the 2.1 GHz UMTS/HSDPA network it built for Manx in 2005, it’s first HSDPA deployment.

The issue of spectrum reuse is becoming significant in Europe as carriers who don’t own 3G licenses or want to use their existing footprints deploy UMTS. The first UMTS networks in Europe required carriers to build entirely new networks to account for the lower propagation of the 3G bands as opposed to their 900 MHz and 1800 MHz DCS licenses. In the U.S. the situation is slightly different since carriers are launching 3G over their existing 2G spectrum, but they all could benefit from the performance boost of lower-frequency deployments. Cingular, for instance, is deploying UMTS over both its cellular and PCS frequencies, allowing it to use its existing network footprint. Many carriers are expected to bid in the upcoming 700 MHz license auction, which would yield frequencies supporting even better performance.