Canadian market-leader Rogers Communications is to become the first operator in the country to begin technical trials of LTE. The firm said yesterday that it is working with Ericsson on a trial in the Ottawa area using both low and high band frequencies. The trial will initially use spectrum acquired in Canada’s recent AWS auctions but Rogers says it has also asked for a licence to run the network using 700MHz airwaves. Rogers and Ericsson have already been lab-testing LTE in Ottawa. “Through this trial we will validate how LTE technology will perform in real world situations across a variety of spectrum frequencies in urban, suburban, and rural environments,” said Rogers CTO Bob Berner (pictured). “Furthermore, we will verify LTE data throughput speeds, performance quality, and interoperability of LTE with our existing advanced HSPA+ network ensuring that future commercial deployment enables the best customer experience.”

The firm’s mobile arm – Rogers Wireless – is the country’s largest mobile operator with around a 36 percent share of the market. However, it is facing renewed competition from its two main rivals – CDMA-based Telus and Bell – which have jointly built a new HSPA network and are eyeing a future migration to LTE. It was also announced today that Barrett Xplore – Canada’s largest rural broadband internet provider – has awarded a contract to equipment vendor Alvarion to build a so-called ‘4G’ network in the country. The network is expected to support WiMAX service initially with an eventual migration to TD-LTE, the unpaired version of the more popular FDD variant of LTE.