Ericsson achieves almost 1Gbps in first LTE Advanced demo

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 28 June 2011 22:39

Business IT - Technology

Ericsson has staged what it says is the first demonstration of LTE Advanced over the air in a mobile environment, achieving download speeds of 900Mbps.

The demo system was based on Ericsson's multi-mode, multi-standard radio base station, RBS 6000. According to Ericsson, "Live traffic was streamed between the RBS and a moving van from which network performance could be monitored. In the demonstration, 60MHz of aggregated bandwidth was used, compared to the 20MHz maximum that is currently possible using LTE. In the downlink, 8x8 MIMO was used."

Ericsson says the 900Mbps throughput is 10 times that of commercial LTE networks today, which operate at best with 20MHz of spectrum, thus LTE Advanced is significantly more spectrally efficient than LTE. And, according to Kursten Leins, GM strategy, Ericsson Australia/NZ: "While the demonstration in Sweden achieved download speeds of more than 900Mbps, the real advantage of LTE for operators is the great increase in capacity."

Ericsson says the first stages of LTE Advanced are expected to be in commercial operation in 2013. Meanwhile adoption of LTE is progressing apace. BroadSoft has just released the results of a survey of 40 telcos on their LTE plans. It points out that: "The GSM Association closely watches the speed of LTE network deployments and recently recognized LTE as the fastest developing mobile technology ever." And, it says that 42 percent of the operators it surveyed are already deploying or trialling LTE.

The survey results, however somewhat, contradict the view that the main driver for LTE adoption is to increase network capacity. LTE brings with it an end-to-end IP core network, which opens up new service possibilities and, according to BroadSoft, "with [the introduction of LTE] the industry is witnessing the emergence of a strong unified communications offering. These services are expected to enable the majority of mobile operators to leverage their significant assets to overcome the threat posed by over-the-top (OTT) services and target both the consumer and enterprise market with innovative, revenue generating services beyond traditional voice and messaging."

BroadSoft CTO, Scott Hoffpauir, said: "We believe the results of the BroadSoft survey reinforce our view that LTE offers significant opportunities for mobile network operators to leverage an all-IP environment to deliver innovative communications services that enhance, rather than replace, voice."