Qualcomm and partners AIS and ZTE used 5G New Radio Dual Connectivity and a mix of mid-band and millimeter wave spectrum to hit peak download speeds of 8.5 Gbps and peak uploads of 2.17 Gbps during a test on a live site in Thailand.
Qualcomm said the speed achievement on a single mobile device using 2.6 GHz and 26 GHz band spectrum in the field, which it touts as a world's first, helps accelerate commercialization of millimeter wave in Thailand and its 5G ecosystem.
The test took place at an AIS (Advanced Info Services Public Company) commercial 5G site in Korat, using a smartphone form factor test device with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF system and ZTE’s mmWAve AAU infrastructure equipment.
AIS, which has mobile, fixed broadband and digital services businesses, is the leading operator in Thailand, serving 42.7 million subscribers across the country with its mobile networks.
At Thailand’s 5G spectrum auction in 2020, AIS secured licenses for 1,200 MHz of spectrum in the 26 GHz band, which it deployed to support 5G in hotspot areas like industrial campuses. It also won licenses for 100 MHz of spectrum at 2.6 GHz, using the mid-band for both 4G and 5G with its mix of coverage and capacity.
The latest test with Qualcomm implemented 5G NR-DC, which allows devices to use both mid-band and mmWave, with one 100 MHz channel of 2.6 GHz and four 200 MHz channels of mmWave at 26 GHz. The speeds reached are extremely fast and outdo earlier records Qualcomm has achieved in recent months.
In January, Qualcomm and Samsung hit a new speed record in a lab trial that used NR-DC combining 800 MHz of mmWave in the 28 GHz band with 100 MHz of mid-band C-band spectrum to reach 8.08 Gbps on a single user device.
At the time, Farook Hussan, senior director of Technology for Networks Business at Samsung, said that based on their research, the 5G downlink was “currently the highest speed achieved in a lab by commercially available equipment, currently installed on live networks.”
A month earlier, in December, Qualcomm, Ericsson and Telstra set a 5G uplink record of 986 Mbps using 5G NR-DC.
ST Liew, VP of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies Asia-Pacific and president of Qualcomm South East Asia and Australia, said the joint trial “proves the feasibility of deploying 5G mmWave in Thailand.”
Wasit Wattanasap, head of Nationwide Operation and Support Business Unit at AIS, said in a statement that AIS’s key goal is to build a smart 5G network as national infrastructure, with the test highlighting how its licensed spectrum across various bands can support business growth.
“This trial gave us a wider channel for the signal and extremely low latency. For instance, there could be streaming games online (cloud game), controlling driverless vehicles and commanding robots remotely in real-time. Moreover, the trial supports the development of new models of chipsets in the future, to speed up data transfer even more,” Wasit said.
It also appears AIS is now gearing up to use mmWave more widely in the country.
“Taking this joint-trial as a good start, we are confident that AIS 5G network is ready to expand the use of mmWave technology and support growth of the business sector in various aspects,” Wasit continued.