C Spire Picks Alcatel-Lucent for LTE

C Spire Wireless, which serves Mississippi and parts of Alabama and the Florida panhandle, is working with Alcatel-Lucent to build and deploy the initial phase of its 4G LTE network. The company is investing $60 million for the initial phase of 4G LTE mobile broadband services in 20 Mississippi markets beginning in September covering 2,700 square miles, a population of 1.2 million and more than 360 cell sites.

C Spire is deploying Alcatel-Lucent’s base stations, IP mobile backhaul for 4G LTE and existing 3G CDMA traffic, Wireless Packet Core (WPC) and a complete IP Multi-Media Subsystem (IMS) network core, which will allow C Spire to develop and offer an increasingly rich portfolio of advanced IP-based services, such as Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE), according to Eric Hollingsworth, vice president of Network Operations for C Spire Wireless.

Alcatel-Lucent also is providing a complete portfolio of professional and network integration services.
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com