KT, Nokia claim LTE-M first
South Korea’s second largest operator KT and Finnish equipment maker Nokia conducted an LTE-M (LTE optimised for IoT) trial using just 1.4MHz of the operator’s 20MHz of LTE bandwidth, leaving the remaining spectrum free for regular LTE traffic.

The firms claim it was the industry’s first field trial of LTE-M using 1.4MHz of bandwidth, also referred to as eMTC, which can provide data rates of up to 1Mb/s and up to four times better coverage. It will be fully standardised with 3GPP Release 13.

The trial, which ran on KT’s LTE network using Nokia’s Flexi Multiradio 10 base stations, demonstrated eMTC’s ability to coexist with the operator’s existing LTE network, Nokia said. It is expected to allow for cost-effective connectivity of more data-rich sensors, such as environmental monitoring and building surveillance, on existing LTE networks.

SKT to take control of SK Planet’s LBS unit
South Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT) will take over its subsidiary SK Planet’s location-based service (LBS) unit in an effort to boost its multi-platform push.

The LBS division, which runs the country’s leading navigation service, T-Map, will be merged into SKT in early April.

The operator announced in November plans to to acquire CJ HelloVision, the country’s largest cable TV company, but needs approval from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning. The acquisition is also facing opposition from rivals KT and LG Uplus.

ZTE demos IoT interoperability
Chinese equipment vendor ZTE, in collaboration with China Mobile Research Institute, completed docking and interoperability tests for Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

The vendor said the results are a key step in the deployment of cloud-based network function virtualisation (NFV) technologies.

The tests, set up by China Mobile Research Institute’s Department of Big Data and IT, used management and orchestration (MANO) and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) platforms to support a wide range of IoT network virtualisation functions, which ZTE said met China Mobile’s requirements for fast and automatic service deployment.

ZTE partnered with VMware, HP and Red Hat to verify the interoperability of different configurations of hardware layers, virtual resource layers and virtualised network functions layers.

Pakistan’s telecoms equipment imports fall 20%
Pakistan’s imports of mobile phones increased 7.9 per cent to $375 million in H2 2015 compared with the same period the previous year.

Overall telecoms imports, however, fell 7.43 per cent during the period to $695 million as equipment imports fell 21 per cent year-on-year to $320 million, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

Telstra invests in Chinese cloud services firm
Telstra Ventures completed a strategic investment in Chinese cloud-storage provider Qiniu, which offers data hosting and processing for enterprises in Asia.

Matthew Koertge, managing director of Telstra Venture, the operator’s investment unit, said Qiniu’s globally-distributed architecture and bi-directional acceleration technology enables enterprises to collect, store and analyse huge amounts of data.

“The opportunities created by the digital explosion underway across Asia, particularly in the Chinese market, underpin this investment,” he said.

Koertge noted that China is an important market for Telstra as it expands its international business.

Telstra Ventures has made five investments in Asia over the past year.