Telecom NZ has said that it will be conducting live customer trials of Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile technology later this year in preparation for the evolution of its XT network to 4G.

Telecom CEO, Paul Reynolds, said Telecom is committed to remaining at the forefront of mobile technology, evolving its world class, all 3G, XT network to deliver the best mobile experience to customers.

"Future network investment will be based on maintaining our network leadership position with a particular focus on accommodating the explosive growth in mobile data and continued rise of smartdevices.

"We will progressively adopt 4G network capability, starting with a customer trial later this year using LTE technology. The Ministry of Economic Development is yet to announce its detailed plans for the auction of 700mhz spectrum, which will be important for widespread, cost effective, 4G deployment. But Telecom nevertheless intends to continue on and build real world experience of 4G operations through this trial.

"To that end, we are currently conducting a technology selection process, with the aim to have the trial service operational with selected business and consumer customers before the end of 2012.

"4G will deliver an even faster mobile data experience for customers and underpin the performance of more and more advanced smartdevices and the applications and services they run.

"It opens up opportunities for our business customers to harness 4G's capabilities to deliver new applications in areas such as cloud computing, mobility, video and collaboration tools.

"Telecom customers can be confident of having access to the best mobile services today and in the future," Dr Reynolds said.