SoftBank, Huawei LTE-A test reaches 770 Mbps in 3.5 GHz band

Japanese telecom operator SoftBank collaborated with network gear vendor Huawei on a field test of LTE Advanced in the 3.5 GHz band that supported a peak download speed of 770 Mbps and average download speeds of 500 Mbps.

The test involved multiple LTE-A technologies to achieve those speeds, including carrier aggregation (CA), coordinated multi-point (CoMP) and cloud baseband, said the companies.

The demo late last month was held in Tokyo's densely populated Ginza district and hosted by the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI). Members are interested in speeding up the release of 3.5 GHz spectrum for TD-LTE use. SoftBank and Huawei said Japan's government is expected to allocate spectrum from 3.4 to 3.6 GHz for commercial LTE networks by 2015.

Huawei said SoftBank also demonstrated five-carrier CA technology for TD-LTE in the 3.5 GHz band using a prototype system that can provide a maximum 1.2 Gbps download speed when run on Huawei's Ultra-wideband RRU (remote radio unit).

For more:
- see this joint release
- see this Telegeography article

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