Qualcomm today announced that its Snapdragon 810 chipset will now support LTE Cat. 9 Carrier Aggregation (CA).
The company says it’s been able to demonstrate download speeds up to 450 Mbps by aggregating three 20 MHz channels. The company says the Snapdragon 810 is now its first top-tier processor with both 64-bit support and CA that works across both FDD and TDD carriers.
The 810 with LTE Cat. 9 should ship to customers in early 2015.
Qualcomm’s CA support reassurances come shortly after Verizon outlines its LTE-Advanced plans for 2015. The wireless provider intends to use CA to pair its 700 MHz and AWS LTE deployments, allowing the carrier to offer up 30×30 MHz channels.
AT&T earlier this year began switching on CA in a few markets. AT&T CSO John Stankey earlier this year predicted LTE-A devices would go mainstream in 2015, according to Light Reading.
Qualcomm putting support into its Snapdragon chipset, a processor that’s found its way into many of the most popular Android phones, is a significant step toward making the LTE-A technology more widely available.
Filed Under: Infrastructure
