Telstra world first LTE-B trial at MCG tonight

During tonight's T20 International at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Telstra will have "select participants" in the crowd trialling LTE Broadcast technology.

Telstra is partnering with Channel Nine and the Melbourne Cricket Club to test LTE Broadcast (LTE-B) technology during tonight's T20 match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. After earlier trials in October last year, this latest stadium trial will see a number of participants using LTE-B enabled tablets and smartphones to watch broadcast feeds over LTE-B.

"When a large number of people gather in one place we often see a huge spike in the demand for data, which can stretch the capabilities of our network and affect our customers’ experience," said Telstra's Mike Wright, Executive Director of Networks, in a statement. "This is particularly evident during sporting events with a lot of our customers looking to enhance the live event by accessing commentary or stats online."

"LTE-B offers us the ability to deliver content more effectively and provide all users the same high quality service using one single stream of data. This streamlined process frees up the rest of the network to carry other data, voice and text messages."

"We have successfully tested the technology in the lab, and tonight’s trial will give us valuable insights into how it performs in the real world from both a user and technical perspective."

Samsung is providing the LTE-B enabled smartphones for the trial, running special firmware, so you won't be able to just magically switch on and join in the fun if you're there.

Telstra has had many LTE extension projects in its roadmap since early 2013, with LTE-Advanced and HetNet technologies also in the works.