Alcatel-Lucent wins LTE deal with Claro Puerto Rico as part of Latin American contract

Mexican telecoms giant America Movil has awarded a contract to Alcatel-Lucent to provide infrastructure for its Puerto Rican unit’s 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband network, which is set to launch commercially ‘in the coming weeks’, according to a press release. As part of a wider supply agreement also covering some of America Movil’s other Latin American subsidiaries, Claro Puerto Rico is adopting Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE solutions including its ‘lightRadio’ portfolio of products, which is designed to ‘dramatically reduce operating costs, technical complexity and power consumption in mobile broadband networks.’ Enrique Ortiz de Montellano, Claro Puerto Rico’s president, announced: ‘With speeds as high as 100Mbps, our subscribers will enjoy the most advanced wireless broadband services. This includes, amongst others, HD video with video on demand, at least ten times faster high speed navigation, high definition videoconferencing, online gaming and other applications.’ As reported by CommsUpdate, local rival AT&T Puerto Rico’s LTE launch came in November 2011, which trumped smaller Puerto Rican cellco Open Mobile’s announcement of 4G launch plans. At the end of that month Claro demonstrated LTE data speeds of 27.6Mbps using modems capable of 30Mbps, having rolled out 4G infrastructure covering San Juan.