Singtel and Ericsson delivered a peak speed of 1.1 Gbps in a joint trial of a 12-layer Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology.
Last week, T-Mobile and Ericsson achieved the same to be the first in the world to hit speeds beyond the 1 Gbps threshold on unlicensed spectrum.
Conducted in a Singtel laboratory, the trial delivered speeds that breached the 1 Gbps barrier by combining several key LTE technologies including 256 QAM, 4x4 MIMO, and aggregating two licensed and three unlicensed spectrum bands on a TM500 Test System device.
The unique 12-layered LAA configuration used in the trial will provide 2 to 3 times faster than prevailing peak LTE speeds, resulting in enhanced user experience, especially in high traffic indoor environments such as shopping malls. Following this successful trial, Singtel will explore the feasibility to deploy the technology on Singtel’s network.
This latest breakthrough extends the partnership of Singtel and Ericsson in 4.5G LTE and trialling 5G in Singapore. Earlier this year, high download speeds of up to 800Mbps were achieved on Singtel’s high-performance LTE network by deploying 256 QAM downlink, 4x4 MIMO and triple carrier aggregation techniques. In October 2017, the partners jointly established a 5G Centre of Excellence to facilitate 5G development in Singapore.
Mark Chong, Group CTO, Singtel
In Singapore, a large percentage of mobile traffic is generated indoors with more mobile customers browsing the web, streaming video and accessing cloud applications on the go. We are now in a position to deploy LAA technology to boost our LTE mobile capacity to meet increasing traffic demand.
Martin Wiktorin, Head for Ericsson, Singapore, Brunei & the Philippines
This trial is a significant milestone in the use of LAA, pushing the limits of Gigabit LTE in a unique configuration of advanced technologies.
