Huawei and Qualcomm hit 300 Mbps with LTE-A

Huawei has successfully completed an LTE-A Category 6 connectivity test with download speeds reaching 300 megabits per second. The Chinese infrastructure, device and chip manufacturer worked with Qualcomm, and used the Qualcomm Gobi 9×35 LTE modem. Huawei said that during the test it was able to support up to 40-megahertz wide-band carrier aggregation. Carrier aggregation refers to the combination of different spectrum bands to increase speed and throughput. Category 6 has the potential to double the data rates of Category 4 LTE-A carrier aggregation solutions.
Huawei did not say where the test was conducted or what spectrum was used. It did say that the test was conducted using its SingleRAN solution, which enables operators to support multiple standards on a single network.
These results follow a similarly successfully test conducted in Finland by NSN, Elisa and Broadcom. That test was conducted in a live commercial network, and produced similar peak download speeds of up to 300 Mbps, aggregating two 20-megahertz channels in the 1800 MHz band (LTE Band 3) and the 2600 MHz band (LTE Band 7).
Qualcomm, Broadcom and HiSilicon are among the chip vendors working on LTE-A Cat 6 solutions. The Qualcomm Gobi 9×35 LTE modem, used in the Huawei test, is the first commercially available cellular modem to be manufactured using a 20-nanometer process. Smaller cuts in the dye mean that more chips can be produced from each piece of silicon.
Huawei has been a leader in the move to LTE-A; its SingleRAN equipment was used in the first commercial LTE-A network, launched by YOTA Networks in Moscow. LTE-A is not expected to hit the United States for several years.