In a live commercial network demo, Ericsson and Vodafone Ireland hit 136 Mbps uplink using Qualcomm processor
Swedish vendor Ericsson and Vodafone Ireland have implemented what the companies claim to be Europe’s fastest uplink speeds in a commercial network using uplink carrier aggregation and 64 quadrature amplitude modulation, the vendor said in a statement. Ericsson confirmed the peak uplink speed as 136 megabits per second.
The uplink carrier aggregation was implemented using a LTE FDD 40 megahertz channel together with 64 QAM in the Vodafone network in Ireland’s capital of Dublin. The result is a 200% improvement compared to current uplink performance, with the ability to deliver peak throughputs of up to 150 Mbps. The demonstration also featured the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with X12 LTE.
“LTE is a powerful mobile technology that is consistently evolving to meet growing demand from both smartphone users and, increasingly, the ‘internet of things’ or IOT,” Ericsson’s head of radio access networks, Per Narvinger, said. “By working with leading operators like Vodafone, Ericsson is able to quickly apply our software-based performance enhancements, like uplink carrier aggregation, in commercial networks to ensure fast time-to-market.”
Vodafone Ireland launched commercial LTE services in October 2013. The telco’s 4G service is currently offered through spectrum in the 800 MHz and 1800 MHz bands.
Orange Business Service wins contract in Belgium
In other EMEA news, French firm Orange Business Services won a contract to help Belgium-based chemical company Solvay to improve the management of its fleet of 7,500 mobile devices.
Based on the MobileIron platform, the solution is managed and hosted in the Orange Business Services cloud. Financial details of the contract, which covers 56 countries, were not disclosed.
“We became aware that we did not really have a bring-your-own-device strategy, nor sufficient control over our mobile devices,” Philippe Panis, IS infrastructure services director at Solvay Business Services, said.
“Our fully managed mobile device management solution will allow them to enforce effective security across all their users’ devices, ensure that corporate applications are kept up to date and keep mobility costs to a minimum,” Anne-Sophie Lotgering, SVP Europe, Russia & CIS, Orange Business Services, said.
