At a media and analyst event Wednesday in San Jose, Calif., alongside Qualcomm, T-Mobile said it has fired up LTE Advanced in more than 920 markets, with Gigabit LTE live in 430 of those markets.
The operator said it achieves Gigabit Class LTE by simultaneously accessing the “trifecta” of carrier aggregation, 4X4 MIMO, and 256 QAM.
T-Mobile also announced plans to launched License Assisted Access (LAA) on small cells this year to add capacity and speed, and further densify its network. In June, the “Un-Carrier” deployed LTE-U, a precursor to LAA in six cities. Earlier this year CTO Neville Ray said that both LTE-U and LAA would be a “big deal” in terms of boosting the capacity and capability of wireless networks in 2018 and 2019, and that testing and trials of both technologies were ongoing.
In August, Verizon hit 953 Mbps in real-world tests utilizing LAA technology.
“Global momentum for Gigabit Class LTE is continuing to pick up around the world, and we’re delighted that T-Mobile is planning to deliver gigabit connectivity to millions of consumers in the United States,” Mike Finley, SVP and president of Qualcomm North America and Australia, said in a statement. “In addition to providing blazing fast mobile connectivity, Gigabit Class LTE enables operators to expand network capacity to accommodate increasing demands by unlimited data plans, and increases overall spectral efficiency, enabling faster speeds for all users in the network.”
At the Wednesday event, attendees saw benefits of Gigabit Class LTE though live demos including streaming of 3D virtual reality sports and entertainment events, super-fast downloads of TV shows and movies for offline play, and increased network capacity and speed for all users regardless of device.
The devices used in the demos were powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 Mobile Platform with X16 LTE —Samsung Galaxy S8, Samsung Galaxy Note8, Moto Z2 Force Edition, and LG V30 – on T-Mobile’s LTE Advanced network.
See the list of markets where LTE-A was rolled out here.
Filed Under: Infrastructure, Virtual reality
