Rogers to launch LTE in Ottawa this summer

Canadian mobile operator Rogers, has announced that it will bring LTE services to capital city Ottawa this summer. The service will be limited to laptop/PC access, with Sierra Wireless providing the USB dongle, which the operator has dubbed the ‘Rocket Stick’.

The company said that customers interested in getting the device early should make a reservation online and has also launched a website that pledges to the rollout of LTE later  this year in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto.

“We’re thrilled to be first in bringing this world class technology to our customers,” said John Boynton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, in a statement. “Ottawa has always been a hotbed for innovation, making it the ideal city to launch our LTE network in Canada.”

The company announced back in April that it would be using Ericsson’s RBS 6000 base stations for its LTE roll out, following on from trials conducted in 2010. The network will operate in Rogers’ AWS spectrum.

In a bid to pique consumer interest, Rogers is promoting theoretical maximum speeds for LTE, quoting 150Mbps downlink and 70Mbps on the uplink. By contrast, AT&T’s recent LTE demo achieved 28.7Mbps on the downlink and 10.4Mbps for the uplink.

North American carriers have adopted 4G as a marketing term for LTE, despite technical purists pointing out that the technology does not meet the original specs for 4G performance. Rogers has gone a stage further. Its strapline for LTE is ‘Beyond 4G’, a move it forced itself into by having already promoted its 21Mbps HSPA+ devices as being ‘4G’.

Rogers is the largest mobile operator in Canada, with over nine million subscribers as of March 2011, according to Informa WCIS stats.