Hungary’s Pannon has announced plans to trial LTE technology in collaboration with ZTE from April this year. Field trials will be carried out in downtown Budapest, as well as south of the capital, and in a town in the countryside, which will be specified at a later stage. Under the contract, ZTE will provide an end-to-end solution, including radio and core infrastructure, as well as end user terminals.

Hungarian mobile internet surfers could be using the fastest mobile broadband technology in the world by 2012 following Pannon's announcement today that it is to conduct LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology trials from this April.

Mobile internet customers using LTE technology with a nominal download speed of 100 Mbps can download an average movie (4.7 GB) in little more than 6 minutes, quicker than most fixed-line networks. With the Internet more and more used for not only downloading but sharing content, upload speed is also gaining significance; the nominal upload speed of LTE, 50 Mbps makes this service suitable for this purpose as well.
In collaboration with ZTE Corporation of China, tests will be carried out in downtown and south of Budapest in April and in a town in the countryside to be specified at a later stage.

“We aim to be Hungary's favourite mobile voice and data provider and that means we aim to constantly improve our services and user experience. With LTE testing we are making the next steps towards providing the best and fastest internet surfing experience for our customers,” said Anders Jensen, CEO of Pannon.

About Pannon

Pannon is one of Hungary’s leading mobile operators. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Telenor of Norway, Pannon entered the Hungarian market in 1994. By the end of Q4 2008, Pannon had 3.731 million active subscriptions and a market share of 33.9%.Besides voice services, Pannon’s business is increasingly dominated by mobile Internet. In addition to its EDGE network available to 99% of Hungary’s population for e-mail and browsing, Pannon is continuously developing its 3G/HSDPA network offering the highest mobile data transfer rates. The 3G/HSDPA network is currently available 563 towns and villages across Hungary. Pannon is a leader also in the Hungarian CR landscape: its corporate responsibility initiatives include the Pannon Példakép Foundation, support for public causes, as well as arts and sports sponsorship.

About Telenor

The Telenor Group is a leading international provider of high quality telecom, data and media communication services. It has ownership interests in 13 telecommunications companies across the Nordic region, Central and Eastern Europe and Asia. Headquartered in Norway, the Telenor Group is among the world’s largest mobile operators with over 160 million subscriptions, revenues of NOK 111 billion in 2008, and a workforce of more than 40,000 (all numbers include Kyivstar).