Telecom Lead Middle East: Sprint is planning to support an LTE acceleration lab in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2013.
The support will be in collaboration with the Israel Mobile & Media Association (IMA).
The LTE lab is expected to bring significant momentum to the Israeli-based ecosystem of startups and developers.
Sprint’s role in the LTE acceleration lab will be to enable startups and developers to access the platforms they need to ideate and build.
“Sprint was open to taking a totally different approach through the structure of this lab, allowing the mobile ecosystem to innovate on Sprint’s LTE network,” said Eyal Reshef, founder and CEO of IMA. “Letting startups run at their natural fast pace and assisting them to scale their products is the best of both worlds, ultimately enhancing Sprint customers’ mobile experience. We look forward to the LTE lab opening later this year.”
“As a complement to our efforts to unlock innovation in the United States, this Sprint-sponsored LTE acceleration lab will allow startups and developers in Israel valuable access to dramatically speed up their time to market,” said Stephen Bye, Sprint chief technology officer.
At the LTE lab, startups will be welcome to work on their ideas, collaborate with other companies, and see what evolves, with minimal carrier direction. Sprint will benefit from having an early look at the technology that may result from this collaborative effort.
Sprint also is leveraging its vendor relationships to enable the ecosystem to trial and test new products on the latest LTE network technology and advanced mobile devices. The equipment will be provided by Alcatel-Lucent, and the lab will collaborate with their ng Connect Program, an Alcatel-Lucent-founded multi-industry ecosystem.
