Ericsson, Telstra, and Qualcomm claimed a further milestone in the development of LTE Advanced carrier aggregation technology, by revealing they achieved download speeds on mobile data networks of up to 450 Mbps.
The 450 Mbps downlink speed was achieved by combining three 20 MHz LTE carriers on Ericsson's commercially available hardware and LTE software and utilising a new LTE multimode solution from Qualcomm Technologies that supports carrier aggregation for download speeds of up to 450 Mbps.
In a release, Ericsson noted that this milestone "confirms the maturity and readiness of the ecosystem to support operator deployments of LTE-A 450 Mbps data speeds."
The demonstration utilised 60 MHz of spectrum, with three 20 MHz LTE carriers in Band 3 (1800 MHz), Band 7 (2600 MHz) and Band 28 (Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) 700 MHz band) respectively. The companies noted that the successful utilisation of Band 28 is significant "as this band is gaining momentum as a global LTE band, with the potential to serve 2.1 billion people."
LTE-A carrier aggregation is designed to enable operators to use spectrum more efficiently to deliver better user experience to customers wherever they are in their networks.
Thomas Norén, vice president and head of radio product management at Ericsson, noted that network performance increasingly becomes a key differentiator for operators as more consumers, businesses and industries rely on mobile services
"Operators such as Telstra are looking for solutions that improve app coverage--network performance from the user perspective. With LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation, app coverage is improved right to the cell edge. Showing this commercial solution live on both network and terminal, with our partners Telstra and Qualcomm, represents a key milestone on the road to large-scale deployments," said Norén.
Meanwhile Ericsson announced separately on Monday that it has signed a five-year deal with Econet Wireless Zimbabwe for the operator's network upgrade program. The deal will see the companies working together to simplify and upgrade the existing 2G/3G/LTE networks.
For more:
- see this Ericsson release
Related Articles:
Ericsson trials LTE Advanced with Poland's Plus
EE launches LTE Advanced services in London, reaches 6M LTE users
Nokia tackles operators' capacity crunches with Liquid Radio
Mallinson: LTE Advanced is bringing more than just carrier aggregation in 3GPP Release 12
Qualcomm: European operators making up lost ground in LTE with Cat 6