China Unicom is the latest operator to launch gigabit LTE
Ericsson and its rival Nokia have been leading gigabit LTE trials and launches around the world with the latest activation with operator China Unicom. Highlighting potential use cases, China Unicom is using Ericsson’s LTE broadcast equipment to stream the network launch ceremony to passengers on the Hainan Island high-speed train.
All four major U.S. carriers are deploying gigabit LTE, as are dozens of other global operators. The first commercial gigabit LTE network went live in parts of Australian operator Telstra’s service area. The underlying technologies at play are carrier aggregation, 256 QAM and 4×4 multiple-input, multiple-output. In terms of device support, there are six smartphones in the market or coming soon that support the increased throughput; all six are built on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 mobile platform and integrated X16 modem.
The VR video experience being delivered to train passengers will let users “not just understand, but feel, the difference with a gigabit LTE network while they are moving at very fast speeds,” Ericsson Head of Market Area Northeast Asia Chris Houghton said.
The network launch builds on Ericsson’s support for China Unicom; the two companies recently built out a gigabit-class network in Guangdon, Hainan, Shandong and Beijing, which has peak downlink speeds of 979 Mbps. That level of throughput allows a user to download a high-definition movie in 13 seconds, according to Ericsson.
Ericsson has been working with Verizon and Qualcomm and hit two major milestones in the past few weeks. First, the carrier used License Assisted Access to aggregate licensed and unlicensed spectrum reaching through of 953 Mbps. Then Verizon reported that it had passed the 1 Gbps mark using Ericsson equipment and Qualcomm’s X20 Cat 18 modem.
