The $60 million investment will provide coverage over 2,700 square miles with 360 cell sites. An estimated 1.2 million people will have access to the service.
Included in the deployment will be Alcatel-Lucent’s base stations, IP mobile backhaul, wireless packet core, and IP multimedia subsystem network core solutions. This will allow C Spire to offer advanced IP-based services including Voice over LTE.
“As an industry leader in smartphone penetration, we’re excited to soon provide our customers with the speed and benefits of 4G LTE on the nation’s only personalised network,” said Kevin Hankins, COO for C Spire Wireless.
“We believe that Alcatel-Lucent’s solutions and considerable global deployment experience, backed by Bell Labs’ technology and innovations, will help us deliver on our commitment to provide a personalised mobile broadband experience that gives consumers and businesses unmatched connectivity, reliability, mobility and the ability to communicate in new and innovative ways.”
Since it announced the initial phase of the LTE deployment in March, C Spire has installed and tested all major core network elements. The company has also completed the second phase of base station equipment installation and integration of Ethernet backhaul at more than 70% of the 360 cell sites.
