Gigabit mobile connections don’t have to wait for 5G–the service is commercially available in some markets today, and chipmaker Qualcomm continues to work with operators and other partners to expand the reach of gigabit LTE.
Earlier this year Australian operator Telstra worked with Ericsson, Qualcomm and Netgear on what it claimed to be the first “gigabit class” LTE mobile device, and the first gigabit LTE commercial network. That work included Netgear partnering with Qualcomm to integrate the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem into the Netgear Mobile Router MR1100, and network infrastructure equipment and software from Ericsson.
Telstra said the with the launch of gigabit class LTE, the carrier improved network capacity and increased LTE download speeds, while also gaining an advantage over competitors as the Australian telco can now offer a new class of LTE service.
Gigabit LTE is enabled by LTE-Advanced features, including 4×4 multiple-input/multiple-output antenna technology, three-channel carrier aggregation and higher order modulation schemes. On the uplink, Telstra said its network uses 64 quadrature amplitude modulation and two-channel carrier aggregation to support peak speed up to 150 megabits per second.
In the latest, Qualcomm partnered with U.K. carrier EE and Sony, who provided the gigabit LTE compatible, commercially-available Xperia XZ Premium, to conduct a demonstration at Wembley Stadium that achieved download speeds of 750 Mbps and upload speeds around 110 Mbps–not quite gigabit, but getting there.
The demo focused on “real-life use cases” including streaming 4K video from Amazon, downloading large files from Google Drive, downloading music for offline use, and a “network simulation showcasing the network-wide benefits of deploying gigabit LTE.”
In the U.S. market, Sprint said it is the first carrier to deploy gigabit class LTE on a commercial network. The carrier recently showcased the technology at Smoothie King stadium in New Orleans using a forthcoming Motorola handset powered by Qualcomm’s 835 mobile platform with an integrated Snapdragon X16 LTE modem.
The Sprint deployment used three carrier channels – a total of 60 megahertz of spectrum – in the 2.5 GHz spectrum band to achieve Category 16 LTE download data speeds on a TDD network. Sprint also said it has deployed the 3CCA required for gigabit LTE speeds in more than 100 markets.
