100Mbps mobiles coming soon?

While today's 3G connectivity seems positively zippy at 1.8Mbps, some of the biggest names in telecoms are clubbing together to work on a standard that could boost mobile speeds to 100Mbps.

Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, Orange and its parent company France Telecom, T-Mobile and Vodafone have all announced their intention to work together on promoting LTE (long term evolution), a super high speed version of 3G.

The collaboration, under the banner of the LTE/SAE (Systems Architecture Initiative) Trial Initiative, will start work this month with a view to showcasing the standard.

The initiative will arrange field tests, interoperability experiments and customer trials to promote the 3G variant. The joint efforts are scheduled to last between 18 and 24 months.

According to the group, the technology is "expected to enable lower operating costs for operators as well as higher data-rate, lower latency end-user services and an improved end-user wireless mobility experience".

It's thought LTE networks will start to be rolled out from 2009 to 2010 and could cost operators $18bn.