ST-Ericsson, possibly using TeliaSonera’s brand spanking new LTE network, successfully demonstrated their new M710 dual mode LTE/HSPA platform. Consumers buying USB dongles, laptop cards, or devices with the M710 chipset built in will have access to both LTE and HSPA (3.5G) networks, and will be able to handover between the two. People buying an LTE modem in Sweden today have to go through the pain of unplugging their 4G dongle and then plugging in a 3G dongle to get internet access in the parts of the country that do not have LTE coverage. TeliaSonera said they plan on replacing customers’ Samsung dongles in Q2 2010 with new ones that can do LTE/HSPA, but maybe they don’t have to that long since ST-Ericsson’s M710 is commercially available now.
“With multimode devices consumers can enjoy new high-speed mobile broadband services and global coverage right from the launch of LTE services,” said Jörgen Lantto, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of ST-Ericsson. “Seamless roaming between LTE and today’s networks is a key device capability to enable faster introduction of LTE.”
“Ericsson is in the lead of the LTE development and together with the rest of the industry we will provide a true ecosystem for mobile broadband,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson. “Roaming between the two technologies, providing seamless services, are a prerequisite for our customers enabling mobile broadband around the world.”
The M710 is pretty beefy with support for quadband LTE, triband HSPA and quadband GSM/EDGE; it will be able to hit 100 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up. Expect to see a lot of dongles powered by this chip hit the market in 2010 once LTE networks start springing up all around the world.
[Via: Press Release]