Nortel Buzzboard

Telephony magazine looks to have an exclusive story today with this article by Kevin Fitchard about a Nortel industry first.  Kevin talked to Danny Locklear, VP of marketing for Nortel carrier networks, about Nortel’s completion of the industry’s first live air handoff of an LTE data call between cell stations.

In the article, Danny says that Nortel completed handoffs between cell stations at speeds as high as 100 kilometers per hour.  The feat was achieved using prototype Nortel LTE radio and network gear and prototype handsets early LTE mobile devices from LG Electronics.  An HD video stream was used during the call handoff testing.

Of course, Nortel’s been doing prior LTE testing to get to this point - and we actually posted a video on YouTube this summer showing a streaming HD video to an LTE device at high speed.  You can see that video below.  The main difference between that demo and this new achievement is that the new demo includes a handoff between cell sites.

[Note that on 8/27 I updated the headline to include “world’s first”]