Huawei and Vodafone Romania made U.S. wireless carrier efforts to hit gigabit speeds look like child’s play in a recent demonstration that hit 1.35 Gbps over an LTE connection.
According to a press release from Huawei, the trial was conducted using an over-the-air interface in an experimental structure not isolated from Vodafone’s commercial network. Huawei’s E2E solution was also a part of the test, the release indicated.
The combination of technologies used to hit the 1.35 Gbps mark will be at least half familiar to those who have been following gigabit announcements from T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T, including both 4×4 MIMO and 256-QAM. But instead of utilizing three carrier aggregation, Huawei and Vodafone jumped two steps ahead to run a mix of FDD and TDD over five carrier aggregation.
Vodafone Romania said the effort is part of its Supernet 4G+ initiative unveiled back in September to advance its mobile infrastructure.
The announcement comes as carriers push toward gigabit speeds on 4G as part of the build up to 5G.
U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile recently announced it hit 979 mbps in a trial utilizing three carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO, and 256-QAM using Nokia’s 4.5G Pro technology, and a prototype device with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor and X16 LTE modem. Though that trial was short of the gigabit mark, CTO Neville Ray said at CES last week it’s possible to get to 1 Gbps using just 50 MHz of aggregated spectrum alongside 256-QAM and 4×4 MIMO.
Sprint is also planning to use 4×4 MIMO and 256-QAM to get to gigabit speeds this year, but indicated it plans to aggregate three 20 MHz (for a total of 60 MHz of spectrum) channels of licensed spectrum to get there.
But while U.S. carrier announcements have centered on three-channel carrier aggregation, it’s clear that combining additional channels is definitely part of the plan.
Nokia back in September introduced its 4.5G Pro and 4.9G technologies, which it said offer up to five-channel aggregation and six-channel and more aggregation, respectively.
Filed Under: Infrastructure
