Hong Kong's leading mobile network operator Create a Simple Life (CSL), its parent company Telstra International and the ZTE Corporation said on Tuesday that they have made good progress in introducing Long Term Evolution (LTE) into public use.

The LTE is the method used for the next generation of mobile broadband technology and is expected to enter into widespread commercial use in 2011.

Addressing the Fifth Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Christian Daigneault, CTO of CSL, said the three companies had already begun testing the LTE at 20 active and fully operational cell sites on the streets of Hong Kong.

"A unique aspect of this trial is that it has moved out of the laboratory and 'into the streets'. We are now testing the cell sites with a 'consumer ready' LTE USB modem and field trials of this are presently being conducted throughout our LTE network," said Mr. Daigneault.

"We are very pleased with the results of these trials and the USB modem is performing extremely well, showing peak download speeds upwards of 100Mbps on the streets of Hong Kong."

"This means that maybe we have to revise the time in which LTE will be commercially available and rolled out in networks across the world," he added.

The CSL and ZTE's experimental work has helped position them at the head of the global mobile telecommunications industry.

"Data traffic has increased by 20 times over that of the legacy 3G network and has now eclipsed voice traffic within our network."

"With the constant evolution of the network to higher speeds toward LTE and the proliferation of Smartphones and other devices, CSL expects the exponential growth in data traffic in Hong Kong to continue for many years and will continue the investment in LTE technology to build one of the world's most advanced networks in Hong Kong," said Tarek Robbiati, group managing director of Telstra International and CEO of the CSL.

(Xinhua News Agency February 17, 2010)