Etisalat in talks with Apple for iPhone 5

UAE telecom major etisalat is in talks with Apple to launch iPhone 5 which is expected to hit the markets later this year.

Ali Al Ahmad, Chief Corporate Communication Officer at etisalat, told Gulf News that the firm is in “talks with most smartphone manufacturers including Apple on the rollout of the 4G handset, iPhone 5 later this year. As the first telecom organisation to roll out the 4G network, Long Term Evolution (LTE ), in the Middle East, we have already started talking to them for the handsets and chipsets in them.”

Ahmed said etisalat had begun the final phase of trials on the advanced LTE network, in order to commercially launch the service in the third quarter of this year. The corporation conducted its second session of the 3rd Annual ICT Media Seminar titled "LTE Technology and its Influence on the Media Industry".

The launch of an LTE iPhone 5 is widely believed to have been pushed to next year.

LTE is one of the latest innovations in mobile broadband technologies in the world, with a peak downloading speed of up to 150MBps. Simply put, LTE is a natural evolution from earlier generations of mobile broadband that will deliver users the benefits of faster data speeds and new services.

LTE loads data at super high speeds reaching more than 150 Mbps, making it a revolution in mobile phone applications. Mobile communication began with pre-GSM technology, followed by GSM (2G) which was introduced in the early 1990s. It offered better quality and more security, therefore becoming instantly and extremely popular amongst users.

Third generation network (3G) paved way for new technologies in the data sector, providing speeds of up to 7MBps. During the last quarter of 2010, etisalat made the latest upgrade with the introduction of high-speed HSPA+ technology that delivers customers data downlink speeds of up to 42.2 Mbps.

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