YOU ARE AT:CarriersChina Mobile, Nokia demonstrate 3.5-GHz inter-band CA

China Mobile, Nokia demonstrate 3.5-GHz inter-band CA

China Mobile claims 220 Mbps peak data transmission rates achieved during demo

SHANGHAI – China Mobile said it has carried out a demonstration inter-band LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation using spectrum in the 3.5 GHz and 2.6 GHz bands that achieved peak speeds of 220 megabits per second. The demonstration used Nokia Networks’ commercial Multiradio 10 Base Station and a test device using TDD-LTE technology.

“The mobile 4G market is developing very fast in China,” said Huang Yuhong, China Mobile Research Institute VP, at this week’s Mobile World Congress event in Shanghai. “On the one hand, millions of users are able to enjoy the convenience brought to them by mobile broadband; on the other hand, we feel the necessity to increase spectrum resources to meet the needs of fast growing data traffic. This demo not only proves the commercial feasibility of the 3.5 GHz TDD-LTE band, but also shows 3.5 GHz can be aggregated with current bands, enhancing 4G networks with more capacity.”

China Mobile launched LTE services in late 2013 using spectrum in the 1900 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2500 MHz bands. Rival operators China Telecom and China Unicom launched LTE in 2014. China Mobile currently has over 816 million subscribers, with approximately 170 million connections on its LTE network.

“Nokia Networks provides dedicated deployment services including software upgrade to quickly implement 3.5 GHz inter-band carrier aggregation,” Nokia Networks TD-LTE VP Aidy Zhang Qi said. The company claims 11 of 54 commercially launched TD-LTE networks currently use the 3.5 GHz spectrum band.

China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua added during a keynote presentation that the operator will target new investments to upgrade its mobile Internet services.

“We want our network to be faster, intelligent and more efficient,” Guohua said.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Juan Pedro Tomás
Juan Pedro Tomás
Juan Pedro covers Global Carriers and Global Enterprise IoT. Prior to RCR, Juan Pedro worked for Business News Americas, covering telecoms and IT news in the Latin American markets. He also worked for Telecompaper as their Regional Editor for Latin America and Asia/Pacific. Juan Pedro has also contributed to Latin Trade magazine as the publication's correspondent in Argentina and with political risk consultancy firm Exclusive Analysis, writing reports and providing political and economic information from certain Latin American markets. He has a degree in International Relations and a master in Journalism and is married with two kids.