Telecommunications companies, Telstra and Ericsson, have demonstrated the next step in LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation by combining five carriers via a live end-to-end mobile network reaching download speeds of up to 1 Gbps.
In the test, the downlink speeds were achieved by aggregating 100 MHz of spectrum across the 700 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2600 MHz (2 x 20 MHz) bands and delivered to a Cobham Aeroflex TM500 mobile device.
An original goal of the LTE standard was to reach the top speed of 1 Gbps, the demonstration became a milestone in the evolution of LTE-Advanced.
Ericsson said the companies also achieved download speeds of 843 Mbps end to end over the Internet to the speedtest.net site. Additionally, the telco claimed the aggregation of 100 MHz of spectrum using the five carriers across four separate bands, has laid the groundwork for the aggregation of higher frequency bands on the road to 5G.
Telstra group managing director of networks, Mike Wright, said the demand for a superior user experience is ever increasing as customers are ‘always-on’ and have access to new, advanced technologies.
“We are thrilled to be able to demonstrate this capability in our network thanks to our ongoing partnership with Ericsson. The demonstration of 1 Gbps end to end capability shows the advanced state of these standards and our ability to rapidly bring them into commercial service in order to deliver increased capability in our network to meet growing demand,” he added.
“We are preparing our networks for growth in business use, as well as emerging technologies, which rely on our ability to deliver high capacity and low-latency solutions.”
Ericsson head of LTE, Per Narvinger, said that activating advanced network capabilities will provide operators with a more solid and secure network performance.
