Exclusive Interview with Shavin Wijetunge, Assistant Manager at Mobitel Sri Lanka

Shavin Wijetunge, Assistant Manager at Mobitel Sri Lanka

Launching LTE requires a huge investment and successful monetization of the network is therefore key to ensure return of investment. To find out how operators across Asia are monetizing their LTE networks, I briefly spoke with LTE Asia speaker Shavin Wijetunge, Assistant Manager at Mobitel to find out how they are driving revenue from their LTE network.

Interview: CTO, Telstra: “While the wearable’s space has thrown up some interesting opportunities the consumer proposition has yet to mature.”

Hugh Bradlow, CTO, Telstra

Telstra is one of the world leaders when it comes to leading edge network technology. We hear from its CTO Hugh Bradlow on what it’s been doing on LTE Advanced and what its plans for the future are in technologies such as LTE Broadcast. To hear more from Hugh Bradlow on this subject, sign up to the LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, taking place on the 23rd-26th June 2014, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands.

What’s the latest on Telstra’s LTE network? For example, at what stage are your plans for LTE Advanced and VoLTE?

Telstra has been amongst the world leaders in pushing LTE-Advanced. We have done a number of trials on our network of carrier aggregation, including a world first in May this year in aggregating three 2x20MHz FDD bands between 1,800MHz (1 band) and 2,600MHz (2 bands) to achieve live network speeds of 450Mbps. We have also tested carrier aggregation across the 700MHz and 1,800MHz bands. We continue to evaluate the use of VoLTE in our network but at this stage, do not see any compelling reason to deploy it urgently.

Interview: Founding Director, Packet One, Malaysia: “Innovative services and applications in the M2M market will create the Internet of Things, with cost-effective inter-connection for ubiquitous wireless broadband.”

Pen San Tang , Founding Director, Packet One, Malaysia

Packet One is the main alternative to the local incumbent for mobile broadband in Malaysia and in this interview we with its founding director Pen San Tang we find more about P1’s transition to from WiMAX to LTE and his views on the potential of the TD-LTE eco-system in 2014.

Pen San Tang will be taking part in a panel discussion entitled “Why TD-LTE? Assessing the Key TD-LTE Drivers” at the TD-LTE conference, taking place on the 8-9 April 2014 at the Fairmont Singapore.

Please tell us the latest state-of-play for P1’s LTE deployment

P1 is planning to deploy TD-LTE using 20MHz in the 2.5GHz band and is finalising its financing arrangement for the deployment.

What are the prospects for the TD-LTE eco-system in 2014?

With China Mobile deploying on a very large scale after the release of commercial TD-LTE license and the Softbank acquisition of Sprint/Clearwire, the eco-system is expected to grow very significantly in 2014.