At MWC 2014 (Mobile World Congress), Barcelona, Qualcomm Technologies and Deutsche Telekom will collaborate on the first LTE Direct operator trial in Germany.
LTE Direct, an operator owned platform that enables the next generation of proximity based services, operates in licensed spectrum and relies on the LTE physical layer. LTE Direct is a device-to-device discovery platform that enables the continuous discovery of devices and services while maintaining privacy and battery efficiency.
Deutsche Telekom is working with Qualcomm Technologies to participate in the trial to showcase LTE Direct’s technology benefits, which could reveal new market opportunities for mobile, further enriching existing applications and services.
“We are participating in this trial because LTE Direct promises new opportunities in the mobile ecosystem,” said Thomas Kiessling, chief product and innovation officer at Deutsche Telekom.
Matt Grob, Qualcomm’s Chief Technology Officer said that the trial is an important step in driving the development of the ecosystem and enabling commercialization of the technology. The upcoming trial would be enabled by trial devices from Qualcomm Technologies, Samsung, and LTE Direct enabled base stations. Standardization of LTE Direct in a 3GPP Release 12 is expected to be completed at the end of this year.
