Italian wireless ISP Linkem has announced the start of its deployment of a time division duplex LTE (TD-LTE) network to cover Rome and its suburbs. The firm says its network, which will use its spectrum licences in the 3.5GHz band, will eventually reach 1.4 million households in the capital.
As reported by CommsUpdate in February this year, Linkem is working with Chinese equipment vendor ZTE on its TD-LTE rollout. The firms say that the fixed-wireless technology is ideally suited for an area such as Rome where there are numerous structural, archaeological and environmental constraints to deploying conventional wireline infrastructure. Linkem currently has TD-LTE networks reaching around half the Italian population, having completed its migration from to TD-LTE from legacy WiMAX technology in August this year; it serves approximately 400,000 customers.