The need for speed continues to grow, and Telstra is moving to accommodate it together with partners Qualcomm Inc., and Ericsson completing the first 2Gbps capable LTE data call using Telstra’s live commercial network.
The demonstration today is a follow-up to the 2Gbps example shown off at Mobile World Congress in February this year, also utilising equipment from Qualcomm and Ericsson.
The call today was made using the infrastructure in the regional town of Toowoomba in Queensland, where they utilised Qualcomm’s X24 LTE modem to aggregate five LTE carriers across three different frequency bands. Telstra advised that each carrier across those bands was using 4×4 MIMO and 256 QAM technologies.
Channa Seneviratne, Telstra’s Executive Director Network and Infrastructure Engineering, said
We are pleased to be working with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies on what is another example of how Telstra is innovating at the cutting edge of mobile technology. Success in 5G will depend on strong underlying 4G technology, and this world first call over Telstra’s commercial network is an important step forward in the development of 5G.
We now have the commercial end-to-end network capability to deliver such world-leading LTE speeds and will now begin to deploy this technology in our mobile network to support even greater capacity and faster mobile speeds for our customers where it is needed most.
Telstra plans to roll out devices capable of using the 2Gbps LTE technology to customers in early 2019, with plans to roll out upgrades to the network to support 2 Gigabit-enabled device later this year.
