Mobile Titans Partner On 4G LTE Network

The world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia announced it garnered the mutual commitment of mobile industry heavyweights Ericsson, NEC and Alacatel-Lucent in forming a licensing framework around Long Term Evolution (LTE), a 4th generation mobile telephone standard still in development.

The companies agreed to a framework based around fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing framework around the patents supporting LTE, which is a direct competitor to Intel's Wimax platform. The release claimed the framework "balances the prevailing business conditions relevant for the successful widespread adoption of the LTE standard."

In order to spur development of the platform, the details of the framework agreement keep patent royalties under 10 percent of handset and laptop sales prices.

"The patent licensing market requires basic rules in order to properly develop and function," said Ilkka Rahnasto, Nokia's vice president of intellectual property rights, in a statement. "Today's announcement is a step towards establishing more predictable and transparent licensing costs in a manner that enables faster adoption of new technologies. "

NextWave Wireless and Nokia Siemens Networks were also included in the deal, though Qualcomm, which has been tussling with Nokia in recent years over patents, was absent from the consortium.

"In order to connect 5 billion people and deal with 100-fold traffic at lowest cost of ownership we need to create economies of scale," said Stephan Scholz, CTO of Nokia Siemens Networks, in a statement. "Mobile broadband implementation using technologies with a predictable, transparent maximum aggregate costs for licensing intellectual property rights will drive global adoption and foster social and economical growth."

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