The battle between Telstra and Optus is set to tick up a notch or two and both telcos aren’t wasting any time in loading up their arsenals. Both have recently made a number of deals, on multiple fronts, to cover all bases and with Optus reportedly gearing up to double its spend in Australia to $2 billion over the next two years Telstra shouldn’t take its dominance for granted.

Optus last week added completed the acquisition of Vividwireless Group and the deal is a vital one for the telco’s 4G ambitions.

Current LTE technology is divided into two categories: FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Time Division Duplex) technology. Both are technically similar but FDD-LTE uses two separate frequency ranges for uplink and downlink, while TDD-LTE uses a single range of frequencies. While FDD networks are great for covering larger areas, TDD networks provide a great deal more capacity. FDD is also better suited for symmetric applications like voice calls while TDD is better for online browsing.

With a major national LTE-TDD network rollout scheduled for 2013, Optus now has access to up to 98MHz of spectrum in the 2.3GHz band, a band already used by some of the world’s leading operators to provide 4G services.

The telco said that it plans to use this spectrum to build a new 4G network using LTE-TDD technology which will deliver wireless broadband at typical download speeds of anywhere between 25Mbps to 87Mbps. That’s twice as fast as existing competitive 4G LTE FDD technology currently employed by Telstra and Optus in their existing 4G base stations.

Optus is also building two significant LTE-TDD testing facilities in St Marys in Western Sydney and at the Optus Campus in Macquarie Park. The move highlights that the telco’s got its skates on when it comes to rolling out both the LTE-FDD and the LTE-TDD networks and present a compelling 4G alternative to Telstra.

Source: Business Spectator