Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm today said they demonstrated 5G peak speeds of 5.06 Gbps in a lab environment. Their demo used 5G mmWave spectrum along with carrier aggregation, a technology that combines multiple channels of spectrum. For the demo, the companies combined eight separate channels of spectrum to achieve the multi-gigabit speeds.
The demonstration used 5G radio gear from the Ericsson Radio System portfolio and a 5G smartphone test device powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X60 5G Modem-RF System with mmWave antenna modules.
The 5.06 Gbps speed was delivered using 800 MHz bandwidth in 28 GHz mmWave spectrum combined with 40 MHz for the 4G LTE anchor. This band combination is commercially supported in the Ericsson Radio System portfolio and several 5G devices available today powered by the Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System.
According to Hannes Ekström, head of Product Line 5G in the Business Area Networks at Ericsson, the test, which broke the 5 Gbps barrier “is the highest speed ever achieved to a single device.”
Earlier this year Samsung Electronics said it achieved a 4.3 Gbps 5G peak speed in a lab demonstration. That test also used carrier aggregation to combine multiple channels of mmWave spectrum into 800 MHz.
RELATED: Samsung achieves 5G mmWave speeds of 8.5 Gbps across 2 devices
The April trial used the Samsung 5G mmWave access unit that combines the traditional baseband, radio and antenna. For the demonstration, Samsung used two test devices equipped with its latest 5G modem chipset. The devices sent signals to the mmWave access unit and achieved approximately 4.3 Gbps speeds each, reaching an industry peak speed of 8.5 Gbps across both devices.
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Verizon just this month launched its 5G Nationwide service with Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), a technology defined by 3GPP. But the truly fast speeds of Verizon’s 5G Nationwide service come on its millimeter wave spectrum.