German operators in talks on joint LTE roll-out - TeDe CEO

Telekom Deutschland, Vodafone Germany, O2 Germany will reach an agreement on joint LTE network deployment before the end of this year, according to Telekom Deutschland CEO Niek-Jan van Damme in an interview with the Financial Times Deutschland. He said that the three operators are in talks with the German telecommunications regulator BNA and federal cartel office about possible cooperation forms. Cooperating on the roll-out would save the operators millions of euros, which they need as they paid EUR 3.6 billion for the LTE frequencies in the spring of this year. The talks focus on a division of regions where operators deploy LTE, so they can lease the network of the each other in regions wherethey did not deploy LTE. Van Damme also said that Telekom Deutschland plans to increase the mobile data speed of its current network based on HSPA from 14.4Mbps to 42Mbps during 2011. At the same time, the operator will transfer its entire mobile network to IP, which is expected to be completed in 2016.