MWC: Verizon to reveal LTE vendors next week

Ever since Verizon announced its LTE plan, its five trial vendors have been preening themselves for the upcoming beauty contest, the winners of which will have contracts for one of the first and one of the largest LTE networks in the world. Though many operators have announced plans for LTE, including AT&T and T-Mobile USA, publically announced contracts have been few and far between. NTT DoCoMo is working with a boatload of vendors in Japan of its LTE Super 3G network, while TeliaSonera has named Ericsson and Huawei to build Europe’s first LTE networks in Stockholm and Oslo.

There is enormous pressure on the major vendors to establish themselves in a leadership position in LTE by winning pieces of these initially contracts, especially as the economy worsens and other operators are forced to reconsider the massive capex spending a new 4G network would require. Consequently vendors have pulled out all the stops on LTE development, each trying to outdo one another on product releases, technology innovations and market positioning. Even before the 700 MHz auction ended last year, Ericsson announced it would have a 700 MHz LTE kit ready. NSN has been rolling out a series of its Flexi wideband CDMA base stations that the vendor claims are LTE ready. Motorola has been focusing on Verizon and other CDMA carriers making the LTE transition by touting CDMA-to-LTE hand-over trials. Alcatel-Lucent has partnered with NEC, giving it access to the Japanese 4G markets where some of the first LTE networks will go up.

Verizon hasn’t given too much detail about the selection process, though several vendors have confirmed they have built live networks in the US using VZW’s 700 MHz spectrum. Nortel, for instance, has built an LTE network in Columbus, Ohio, where Verizon’s 700 MHz spectrum doesn’t face interference issues with broadcasters still transmitting analog TV. Nortel has also conducted lab and field trials with Verizon in its research center in Ottawa.

Nortel’s president of carrier networks, Richard Lowe, said Nortel is one of six vendors that Verizon Wireless is evaluating in its Phase 3 trials. Next week Verizon will reveal the final cut of vendors that are moving on to Phase 4, which almost certainly will be the vendors that build the final network, Lowe said. Nortel’s trials with Verizon have been a success, Lowe said, adding that the vendor has a good chance at making the final cut.

“We understand the migration issues between CDMA and LTE,” Lowe said in a recent interview. “That’s one of the reasons we’ve been very successful with our trials with Verizon.”

AT&T and T-Mobile also have begun their initial search for LTE vendors, Lowe said, though their planning isn’t as far along as Verizon’s. AT&T plans to deploy networks in 2010 and launch commercially in 2011, but it has already begun soliciting bids for trial networks. Nortel responded to the request for proposal (RFP) last month and is on the short list for a trial win, Lowe said. Meanwhile, T-Mobile recently issued its own RFP for trial networks over its PCS spectrum, he said.