LTE-A network offers claimed access speeds up to 375 Mbps
Mobile telecom operator Ooredoo Qatar and Nokia Networks said they have launched a LTE-Advanced network in Qatar designed to offer peak download speeds up to 375 megabits per second.
The network is available in several high-traffic areas of Doha, including West Bay, the Corniche and Katara Cultural Village, though customers will need LTE Category 9-capable handsets to gain maximum data speeds. Nokia Networks provided its LTE-A three-band carrier aggregation technology based on its Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station and software to aggregate two 20-megahertz carriers in the 1800 MHz and 2600 MHz bands with one 10-megahertz carrier in the 800 MHz band.
In November, the two companies demonstrated what they claimed was the Middle East’s first Cat 11 demonstration, achieving close to 600 Mbps peak throughput.
Ooredoo Qatar ended the third quarter with almost 3.5 million mobile subscribers in the country. Ooredoo launched LTE services in Qatar in 2013, and currently offers LTE services across five of its nine markets. The telco operates in Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Maldives.
Turkcell tests ‘4.5G’ technology
In other EMEA news, Turkish operator Turkcell said it has achieved mobile broadband speeds up to 1.2 gigabits per second by aggregating five carriers in a demonstration carried out in its Istanbul headquarters using equipment provided by Chinese vendor Huawei.
During the demo, Turkcell said it used a total of 79.8 megahertz of spectrum consisting of 29.8 megahertz in the 1800 MHz band, 30 megahertz in the 2100 MHz band and 20 megahertz in the 2600 MHz band. The carrier recently obtained additional spectrum assets in a government auction.
“With the ‘4.5G’ auction, we had set the bar high in terms of offering the fastest mobile broadband Internet,” explained Turkcell CTO Ilker Kuruoz. “We had announced that we would not only offer the country’s fastest 4.5G upon roll-out on April 1, but also go beyond that in order to match the current fiber experience on mobile. … With this speed demo, we are not only pushing the limits of 4.5G but also taking a major step towards ‘5G’ experience in terms of reaching speeds that exceed 1 Gbps.”
