Residents in rural areas of the U.S. state of Texas will soon be able to enjoy high speed broadband services on mobile devices thanks to an agreement between Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE, ALU) and West Central Wireless, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Central Texas Telephone Cooperative.

Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will enable West Central Wireless to launch new 4G LTE service. In addition, West Central Wireless will open up its core network under a new ‘network hosting’ agreement to offer other regional operators the opportunity to deliver broadband services in underserved rural communities.

West Central Wireless intends to launch its own 4G LTE service in late 2012 providing subscribers with faster speeds and higher quality connections to the Internet via laptops in combination with LTE dongles and home broadband networks. Access via 4G LTE smartphones and tablet devices will be available later.

Deployment of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireless Packet Core system will enable the high speeds and bandwidth needed to deliver 4G LTE services. Furthermore, opening up part of this ‘packet core network’ will allow West Central Wireless to enable other regional operators to accelerate new services as the agreement eliminates the need for investment in packet core networks of their own. They need only to develop a radio access network using Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE base stations to provide coverage to customers. This will help reduce the costs associated with deploying a full LTE network and provide new revenue streams created by the delivery of these services.