The owners of the patents underpinning LTE, the fourth generation mobile technology, have agreed to only charge each other "reasonable" licence fees.

The companies involved - Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Sony Ericsson - have all agreed to a framework based around fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing, which should prevent the kind of ongoing patent spats which dogged 3G technologies.

LTE networks are still some way off, though several network operators have stated their intention to deploy the technology - which could, in theory, provide mobile speeds of 320Mb/sec. However, such speeds are unlikely, and LTE is more about flexibility than increasing the burst speed.

The agreement states that royalties for LTE will total less than ten per cent (of the resale price) for handsets and less than $10 for laptops, though with the difference between the two becoming increasingly blurred, the ten per cent is the more important figure.

It's up to the companies involved to decide how that (up to) ten per cent is split between them. Promising to play nice will increase the confidence of the market in LTE, though it will be years before we find out if the framework can hold together once the technology is making real money.®

Related stories

• Infineon unleashes 4G chip (17 January 2009)
• Nokia calls foul over patent spat (7 January 2009)
• Nokia hands Qualcomm €1.7bn to close patent dispute (17 October 2008)
• Nokia and Qualcomm end patent war (24 July 2008)
• Patent shields customer support from customers (1 April 2008)
• Royalties are the admission price, Microsoft tells freetards (27 March 2008)
• Comment Nokia gets the upper hand in global IPR wrestle with Qualcomm (6 March 2008)
• RIM out to patent BlackBerry slider (5 March 2008)
• Nokia lands another punch on Qualcomm (3 March 2008)
• Nokia wins another round in Qualcomm battle (28 February 2008)