Deutsche Telekom said it has set Gigabit LTE data rates free from the laboratory, after achieving a peak speed of 1.22 Gbps in a live trial conducted with Huawei.
The German operator and Chinese vendor utilised LTE-Advanced Pro (LTE-A Pro) technology during the trial on its network in Berlin. A conventional mobile base station was bundled with a small cell, and data traffic was transmitted over five carrier frequencies instead of a single frequency.
Deutsche Telekom spokesman Christian Fischer told FierceWireless:Europe that the companies used 10 MHz of spectrum in the 1800 MHz band, and 20 MHz in the 1800 MHz and 2600 MHz bands.
“In addition we tested with 2x20 MHz in TDD mode using the 3500 MHz band. The demo contained an indoor and an outdoor scenario. For the outdoor scenario we used 10+20 MHz in 1800 and 20 MHz in the 2600 MHz band for our macro base station, flanked by 20+20 MHz in the 3500 MHz band via small cell,” he said.
Deutsche Telekom explained in a statement that the five-carrier approach required the transmitter station and devices used to receive the data traffic to be capable of running 4x4 multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) technology. In addition to delivering peak data rates of over 1 Gbps, the combination of technologies increased the wireless capacities in all cells where the solution was deployed.
Claudia Nemat, Deutsche Telekom’s board member for Europe and Technology, said rapid changes in end-user behaviour mean that operators must invest in technologies that enable mobile access to high-speed Internet connections. “[F]ast Internet access can’t be limited to just fixed lines and fibre optics,” she noted.
The successful trial means that Deutsche Telekom’s LTE “network delivers” and puts the operator “ahead of our time and ahead of the competition,” Nemat added.
Deutsche Telekom said the Berlin trial is the latest step in a long-term collaboration with Huawei that already delivered data rates of over 340 Mbps during a trial in 2015 involving the bundling of three carrier frequencies. The operator noted such developments are necessary to meet growing consumer demand for mobile data caused, for example, by rising use of mobile video services.
Lin Baifeng, president of Huawei’s Deutsche Telekom account, said the latest trial leaves the operator well placed to meet that growing demand for mobile data and to deliver a high quality user experience. In addition to setting the operator up for the future, the trial proves “the benefits of the latest evolutionary step of this technology, LTE-Advanced Pro, in real field application,” he said.
Huawei was also involved in a previous real world trial of LTE-A Pro conducted by TeliaSonera’s Norway-based subsidiary NetCom in December 2015 that achieved data rates of up to 1 Gbps.
For more:
- see this Deutsche Telekom announcement
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