Telstra, Ericsson and Qualcomm achieved LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) peak downlink speed of 450 Mbps (Category 9) by combining three 20 MHz LTE carriers on commercially available Ericsson multi-standard hardware and LTE software.
The demonstration utilized 60 MHz of spectrum, with three 20 MHz LTE carriers in Band 3 (1800 MHz), Band 7 (2600 MHz) and Band 28 (APT 700 MHz) respectively. The successful utilization 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. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, Category 9 LTE-A modem and Ericsson high-performance LTE software (Networks Software 14B) and hardware supporting the company's multi-standard RBS 6000 family of base stations for macro and small cell networks drove today’s results.
The companies said the milestone confirms the maturity and readiness of the ecosystem to support operator deployments of LTE-A 450 Mbps data speeds. It builds on the May 2014 demonstration of the same speed by Ericsson and Telstra, achieved with a user test device on Telstra’s commercial network.
Mike Wright, Telstra Group Managing Director, Networks, says: "We are pleased to play a role in this milestone with Ericsson and Qualcomm. Our customers are keen to see the benefits of LTE-A Carrier Aggregation across our network and today’s achievement demonstrates that Telstra is working with industry leaders in order to develop the next generation of fast and reliable mobile data services. We look forward to offering our customers devices incorporating this new chipset when available in the market."
Thomas Norén, Vice President and Head of Radio Product Management, Ericsson says: "As consumers, businesses and industries are transformed through mobility, network performance becomes a key differentiator. Leading 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."
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The final stages of testing, which were completed in collaboration with Telstra, was based on ready-to-release versions of Ericsson's L14A software release. Ericsson said its L14A software leverages load balancing for better spectrum efficiency and improved user experience during high-load situations. It supports all bandwidth and frequency combinations for up to 40MHz Carrier Aggregation, providing users with speeds of up to 300 Mbps. The test also used Qualcomm;s fourth-generation 3G/LTE multimode modem, the Qualcomm Gobi 9x35 chipset.
