This anonymous grey box might not look very impressive but the device, a 3G base station from Nokia Siemens Networks, is capable of delivering data to cell phones at speeds that beat the broadband in most homes.
It's based on a system called LTE, or Long Term Evolution, which is the next major upgrade to 3G technology. While top-of-the-line current cell phones can deliver data at speeds of around 7.2 megabits per second, LTE will accelerate this to over 100 megabits per second.
In a demonstration last week in Tokyo Nokia Siemens showed the system running at around 144 megabits per second, which is close to the actual speed that first generation systems are likely to run. The same networks will also be able to support upstream data from the cell phone to the network at around 55 megabits per second.
Nokia Siemens sees carrier tests starting later this year, progressing to a commercial roll-out in late 2009 or 2010.
Matthias REISS, head of LTE radio, Nokia Siemens Networks
"We are shipping this base station, from the hardware point of view, by the end of this year, 2008, and we are shipping it first as a Wideband CDMA base station but it's also the same underlying platform that we use for Wimax and LTE, so this makes Nokia Siemens Networks capable of doing these multi technologies. And so shipment of the base station platform as such will be by the end of the year and then availability of LTE as a complete solution is in early 2010."
The speeds mean LTE will be catering to the same audience as Wimax.
Matthias REISS, head of LTE radio, Nokia Siemens Networks
"We don't see them as competing. We see them as complementing technologies, we are supporting both and the differentiation is mostly on the customer, where the operator comes from. Does he have a cellular license? Then LTE is the right technology. And there are new customers that do not have cellular licenses and they go for Wimax implementation."
On the handset side the company is also working with parent company Nokia so that engineering terminals like this one can be reduced to something like this.
In Tokyo, this is Martyn Williams, IDG News Service.
