AT&T says it plans to deploy 5G SA “when the ecosystem is ready”
AT&T has laid claim to being the first to achieve a data call with two-carrier aggregation in the uplink in 5G Standalone.
In a blog post, Jason Sikes, AT&T’s AVP of device architecture, wrote that AT&T is seeing demand for uplink capacity and speed increasing on the order of about 30% per year in its mobile network as consumers generate more and more content.
Sikes said that the uplink CA test was conducted in AT&T’s labs with Nokia’s 5G AirScale portfolio and MediaTek’s 5G M80 mobile test platform.
The carrier aggregated low- and mid-band spectrum: 850 MHz (n5) and its C-Band n77 airwaves and said that with 40 megahertz of C-Band added to 850 MHz, it saw a 100% increase in uplink throughput compared to 850 MHz by itself. by aggregating our low-band n5 with 40MHz of our mid-band n77. When it aggregated 100 MHz of C-Band, that jumped to a 250% uplink throughput increase.
That translates to achieving uplink speeds of more than 70 Mbps with 850 + 40 megahertz of C-Band and more than 120 Mbps with 850 + 100 megahertz of C-Band.
“We have said that we plan to deploy Standalone 5G when the ecosystem is ready, and AT&T is charging forward to advance SA ecosystem readiness,” Sikes wrote, adding, “Businesses and developers will be some of the first to take advantage of the new technologies standalone 5G enables as we continue to move from research & development to their deployment.” 5G SA, he said, “”will be key to business opportunities like the next generation of connected cars.”
Sikes also said that AT&T is using two-layer uplink MIMO on its TDD C-Band and that in the coming months, it plans to enable 5G New Radio dual connectivity (NR-DC), aggregating low- and mid-band spectrum with millimeter-wave at 5G SA. The company’s lab “have achieved 5G NR-DC downlink throughput speeds of up to 5.3 Gbps and uplink throughput speeds of up to 670 Mbps,” Sikes said, adding that NR-DC will be used for high-speed connectivity “for both downlink and uplink in stadiums, airports, and other high-density venues.”
Read the blog post from Sikes here.
