What does the future hold for LTE Proximity Services?

Senior Conference Researcher for the LTE World Summit, Informa Telecoms & Media

Over the past few months, we have been hearing more and more about LTE Proximity Services and LTE Direct. These discussions are being driven by a handful of key players in the market, in particular Qualcomm and Deutsche Telekom.

But what is LTE Direct? This is Qualcomm’s preferred term for a new and innovative device-to-device technology that will enable users to discover other devices and services within a proximity radius of ~500m.

Interview: Head of Mobile Access: Deutsche Telekom: “[LTE Radar] is nothing less than a powerful new enabler that will significantly enhance value of the mobile access.”

Thomas Henze, Head of Mobile Access, products & innovation, Core Telco Products, at Deutsche Telekom

Is ‘LTE Radar’ a rare example of forward thinking from the telcom community? Thomas Henze, Head of Mobile Access, products & innovation, Core Telco Products, at Deutsche Telekom, certainly thinks so and in this interview he tells us more about the fledgling technology and why he’s excited about the impact it will have on consumers and the prospects it offers to operators.

Henze will be speaking on Day One of the 10th annual LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, taking place on the 23rd-26th June 2014, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. 

Can you tell me more about “LTE Radar” and LTE proximity services?

Technically proximity services consist of two components: broadcast and discovery. This means devices will be enabled to a) broadcast digital information into their proximate environment in order to “become aware” and b) discover similar information, about and from other devices.

Integrating control of this functionality into the mobile network as well as using LTE on licensed spectrum for the transmission makes it a powerful telco grade solution.

As for the terms, at Deutsche Telekom we refer to our related project as “LTE Radar”, a name which is especially refers to user’s perception of the discovery function.  It’s not necessarily our final product name, rather a working title. The technology behind “LTE Radar” is pretty much based on Qualcomm’s “LTE Direct” concept and is currently being standardised by a 3GPP project called “Prose”.