Ericsson: commercial gigabit services within reach with LAA

Ericsson provided a quick update on its activities with Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), a technology which it says will enable commercial gigabit services in the near future.

LAA allows operators to use unlicensed spectrum in combination with their licensed spectrum. The technology is designed to co-exist with other unlicensed spectrum technologies such as WiFi via a feature termed 'listen before talk', which allows fair coexistence between LTE-LAA and WiFi.

Recently, Telstra, in partnership with Ericsson and Qualcomm, became the first carrier to launch a commercial Gigabit LTE network. The gigabit downlink performance is enabled by LTE Advanced features including 4x4 MIMO, 3CA (Three Carrier Aggregation) and higher order modulation (256QAM). On the uplink, Telstra's new network capability uses 64QAM and 2CA (Two Carrier Aggregation) for a peak upload speed of up to 150 Mbps. NETGEAR's Nighthawk M1 Mobile Router (MR1100) leverages 4x4 MIMO and is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon(TM)  X16 LTE modem.

In June, AT&T and Ericsson conducted a live LTE-LAA technology field trial, during which initial wireless data rates of more than 650 Mbps were achieved in downtown San Francisco.

Also in June, T-Mobile completed the nation’s first mobile broadband data session live in the field using License Assisted Access (LAA) on its commercial network.

Italian operator TIM has achieved speeds of nearly 1Gbps on its live advanced 4G network in Milan using Ericsson’s LAA technology.

Ericsson, Verizon and Qualcomm achieved a speed of 953 Mbps in a joint commercial network deployment in Boca Raton, Florida. This is the fastest announced speed leveraging LAA technology achieved in a real-world, dynamic network environment in the US.

South Korean operator SK Telecom  and MTS, the largest mobile network operator in Russia, have all recently completed their own LAA trials.

Ericsson introduced its micro Radio 2205 for LAA. Designed for unlicensed spectrum use, Ericsson’s micro solution provides small dimensions, flexible mounting and superior performance. Qualcomm Technologies provided a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile platform device, with Gigabit LTE capability thanks to the integrated Snapdragon X16 LTE modem.

https://www.ericsson.com/en/news/2017/8/reaching-gigabit-milestones-with-ericsson