Telstra is launching commercial Gigabit LTE service is select capital cities across Australia. The gigabit downlink performance is enabled by LTE Advanced features including 4×4 MIMO, 3CA (Three Carrier Aggregation) and higher order modulation (256QAM). Ericsson is a key technology provider for the rollout.
At its “Gigabit LTE Experience” event in Sydney, Telstra said that n addition to Gigabit LTE speeds on the downlink, its new network capability also delivers up to double the previous uplink speeds, meaning a peak upload speed of 150 Mbps. On the uplink, Telstra’s new network capability uses 64QAM and 2CA (Two Carrier Aggregation) for a peak upload speed of up to 150Mbps.
NETGEAR’s Nighthawk M1 Mobile Router (MR1100) will first be made available to consumers in Australia in late February, 2017. The device leverages 4×4 MIMO and is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon(TM) X16 LTE modem.
Mike Wright, Group Managing Director, Networks, Telstra says: “As the roll out of Gigabit LTE continues, our customers with a Gigabit capable device can enjoy a faster mobile experience for both downloads and uploads. As our customers continue to use increasing amounts of data for entertainment and business use, Telstra’s continuous innovation ensures our network is ready to deliver the country’s best mobile experience.
“Gigabit LTE is also an important step on our journey to 5G and demonstrates Telstra’s commitment to delivering Australians a world class network now and into the future. We are well placed to evolve our 4G network and are putting the building blocks in place for Australia to be ready for 5G – this will deliver more bandwidth and lower latencies which are critical for emerging applications such as downloading 4K video, IoT, autonomous vehicles, augmented reality and shared virtual reality,” said Wright.
Per Narvinger, Vice President Network Systems, Ericsson says: “Once again we are pleased to partner with Telstra to deliver the world’s first commercial Gigabit LTE network which we see as an important step as Telstra continues toward 5G. Gigabit LTE provides end users with even faster mobile broadband speeds, further improving their mobile experience while supporting new emerging bandwidth intensive applications. It is exciting to deliver LTE advances that employ LTE carrier aggregation of 60MHz of spectrum with higher order MIMO, and advanced LTE modulation which are all necessary ingredients for Gigabit LTE.”
