The Third Generation Partnership Project has submitted its LTE-Advanced proposal, the follow-on to LTE technology, to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), but networks based on that standard probably won't come to market for another six to seven years, Adrian Scrase, head of the 3GPP said in a presentation at Supercomm.
"It will be three or four years before we see widespread LTE deployments so we won't see the first LTE-advanced networks for another six or seven years," Scrase was quoted in Telephony. "We're looking quite far out into the future."
LTE-advanced will incorporate technologies such as eight-by-eight multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) antennas, network MIMO capabilities and channel sizes as large as 100 MHz. That means this next generation could achieve uplink data speeds of 500 Mbps, downlink speeds of 100 Mbps in high mobility environments and downlink speeds as high as 1 Gbps at low mobility.
LTE networks will be capable of delivering bandwidth as high as 1 Gbps, but Scrase warned that that number shouldn't be hyped because data rates per user varies because of a number of network factors, including the number of users within a cell, interference and the types of devices used.
For more:
- see this Telephony article
Related articles:
Nokia Siemens tests LTE-Advanced technology
Verizon's Melone details 4G plans for backhaul, antennas and backup power