The FINANCIAL — Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, have successfully completed the network and device testing of LTE-Advanced features enabling download speeds of 1 Gbps.
This commercial technical milestone was achieved through the successful interoperability testing of the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, a product of Qualcomm Technologies, at Ericsson headquarters in Sweden and witnessed by executives from Telstra, according to Ericsson.
Mike Wright, Group Managing Director Networks, Telstra, says: “It is great to see these LTE industry leaders, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, supporting the rapid commercialization of Gigabit LTE service levels. Compressing the timeline between lab trials and commercial availability helps us to bring devices to market sooner, allowing us to continually improve the user experience, which will only become more important as we evolve towards 5G.”
The commercial availability of 1 Gbps-capable LTE devices is being driven by NETGEAR, with product development well underway. NETGEAR has already released several LTE-Advanced devices supporting LTE data speeds up to 600 Mbps.
Andrew Green, Vice President of Mobile Network Products, NETGEAR, says: “We are pleased to continue our longstanding partnership with Telstra, Qualcomm, and Ericsson in the delivery of leading-edge, high-speed data LTE devices and service. Together, we are transforming the industry and improving the end user data experience.”
Earlier this month, Ericsson announced new Ericsson Radio System software and hardware supporting 1 Gbps user peak rates, and Qualcomm Technologies announced the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, to address LTE growth opportunities while supporting the operator’s evolution to 5G.
Thomas Norén, Vice President, Head of Radio Product Management, Ericsson, says: “Gigabit LTE will enable operators to give a big boost to their customers, while they evolve to 5G. Of course, the speeds consumers will actually enjoy depend in part on the technology in their devices, which is why Qualcomm Technologiess’ support and commitment to having chipsets ready to drive smartphone and mobile broadband device availability this year is so critical.”
To achieve the breakthrough performance, Ericsson Networks Software 16B harnesses a combination of powerful software features to deliver extreme app coverage, with user peak rates of up to 1 Gbps, through software enhancements to today’s commercial LTE networks. The combined features of Gigabit LTE, include:
Three component Carrier Aggregation (CA) which enables the user to benefit from up to 60 MHz combined bandwidth from different spectrum bands simultaneously;
4X4 MIMO (multiple input multiple output) on two aggregated carriers, which doubles the number of unique data streams being transmitted to the user’s smartphone, thereby enabling higher capacity and data throughput;
LTE 256 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) encoding which packs more bits into the available spectrum; and
Ericsson’s Lean Carrier, which increases both the data throughput received by end users, and overall system capacity by reducing the interference caused by excess reference signaling across the LTE network.
The combination of these features, which will be demonstrated live at MWC 2016, more than doubles downlink peak data rates compared to three component CA alone.
Serge Willenegger, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., says: “The Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE modem represents the latest innovation in mobile technologies and an important milestone in the path to 5G. We are excited to collaborate with other mobile technology leaders such as Ericsson, Telstra and NETGEAR to bring these innovations to users around the world.”
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