Europe invests in higher speed networks

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The European Commission has promised to invest €18 million (£15.6 million) into research of high speed 4G networks for mobile internet.

The research will be centred around Advanced Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology which could enable mobile internet speeds of up to 1Gbps.

Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner, said in a statement: "Europe's research know-how will continue to set the tone for the development of mobile services and devices around the globe, just as we did in the past decades with the GSM standard.”

Trials of standard LTE are already happening across Europe in countries such as Finland, Germany, Spain and here in the UK. These trials have provided up to 100Mbps, which the European Commission claimed was ten times faster than current 3G networks. However, 4G Advanced LTE could lead to speed ten times faster again.

Reding continued: “LTE technologies will turn mobile phones into powerful mobile computers. Millions of new users will get ultra high-speed internet access on their portable devices, wherever they are.”

The funding is earmarked for release on 1 January 2010 and will be part of the €700 million the EU has dedicated to investing on future networks between 2007 and 2013.

Operators and manufacturers, such as Orange, T-Mobile and Nokia, have supported the investment and are expected to spend €6 billion on LTE equipment themselves by 2013.

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