MUNICH – The LTE SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI), a unique global collaboration between vendors and operators, has successfully finalized preparation phases for interoperability testing (IOT) - and the agreements to establish real live networks for friendly customer trial (FCT).

The LSTI IOT activity group completed the minimum feature set and the recommended test procedure description. The IOT testing will prove that equipment from different manufacturers work together in a lab environment and will improve confidence for successful field trial activities. This testing and the co-operation of the vendors and operators bring forward the LTE ecosystem and accelerate commercialisation of LTE-EPC by fostering technology alignment across all parties.

“We have identified a core set of features for the most vital interfaces of the LTE-EPC technology for the IOT testing,” explains Christian Kuhlins, LSTI Activity Manager IOT, Ericsson AB. “This test phase is a way of checking that the standards are unambiguous and have been interpreted the same way by all manufacturers. Any inconsistencies can be resolved and fed back in into the 3GPP standardization body by the member parties themselves. In addition to the air interface, IOT will secure interoperability of the entire infrastructure between the main representative interfaces between radio base stations from different vendors (interface X2) and access network to core network (interface S1) in a multi vendor configuration.”

The IOT mission is to elaborate and recommend a minimum set of 3GPP R8 LTE-EPC interface features for interoperability testing of the standards compliant LTE-EPC technology and, furthermore, to provide an overview of the progress of industry IOT on platforms intended for commercial use for those features. First declarations on IOT activities are expected in Q4 2009.

For the Friendly Customer Trials, a majority of LSTI Operators have now completed their agreement(s) with their LSTI Trial Vendor(s). This means that the LTE-EPC Trial strategy is agreed on bi-lateral basis, and compatible with the recommendations of the LSTI. Notably, LSTI Operators will use the LSTI commonly agreed set of test domains which are based upon NGMN requirements, and will report on these test domains. Set-up of Trial networks have now started and Operators will soon report on their respective Trial results.