Airtel selects Huawei for 4G rollout
Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile operator, has contracted Huawei to build out its 4G network in the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu regions. The three-year deal includes base stations for Airtel’s FDD-LTE network running on the 1.8GHz band.

The company has a licence, won in the February auction, to operate in the 1.8GHz band in 15 regions. It recently selected Ericsson to provide equipment for two of the regions.

It has also launched TD-LTE services using 2.3GHz spectrum in 15 cities.

Ericsson plans second factory in India
Ericsson is reportedly investing $15 million to set up a second factory in India.

The Swedish firm currently manufactures telecoms equipment for the domestic market in Jaipur. The new facility will be in Pune and will start production in 2016.

It will be a hub for exports to Southeast Asia, west Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The move is part of its strategy to set up delivery points closer to the customer to enable shorter lead times and optimise distribution costs, the company said

Ericsson India employs more than 19,000 people in manufacturing, R&D, network operations and sales.

XL launches LTE in three cities
Indonesia’s XL Axiata said it has launched LTE services with peak (theoretical) download speeds of 100Mb/s in three major cities. The firm, the country’s second largest operator with a 21 per cent market share, has rolled out 4G in Jakarta, Medan and Yogyakarta.

Indosat trials GSMA’s Mobile Connect
Indonesia’s Indosat has completed a trial of Mobile Connect, the GSMA standard for secure log-in and authentication via any mobile device.

Mobile Connect allows consumers to safely access mobile and digital services such as e-commerce, entertainment, banking, health and digital entertainment as well as e-government portals via their mobile phones. It provides secure access as well as greater privacy and strong data protection.

The trial is part of a global initiative aimed at creating a universal mobile identity authentication standard. For the trial, Indosat and the GSMA partnered with Ericsson, which provided the underlying platform for digital authentication.

KT, Ericsson demo carrier aggregation in hetnets
KT, South Korea’s second largest mobile operator, and Ericsson have demonstrated the use of carrier aggregation between small cells and macro cells to increase data speeds by more than 20 per cent.

In a test at the operator’s Seoul facilities, the technology automatically selected the optimum small cells so that carrier aggregation can be maintained as devices move from cell to cell in a heterogeneous network (hetnet).

The companies said the new method will be key for the development of 5G networks with many frequencies, which results in a sharp rise in interference.

New NZ-Australia cable planned
Spark, Vodafone and Telstra announced they will invest $70 million in a 2,300km subsea cable between Australia and New Zealand. Spark and Vodafone will each put in $32 million for a 45 per cent interest.

The Tasman Global Access (TGA) cable, with a capacity of 20TB/s, will land in New Zealand south of Auckland and at Telstra’s landing station in Sydney.

The cable, to be build by Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks starting next year using 100G technology, will offer an alternative route for trans-Tasman traffic, improving New Zealand’s international connectivity, as well as strengthening links to Asian markets.