Ericsson noted that the achievement took place at Telstra’s Innovation Center on the Gold Coast
Telstra, in partnership with Ericsson and MediaTek, has reached a peak downlink speed of 9.4 Gbps on its live commercial 5G Standalone (SA) network, with speeds exceeding 10 Gbps demonstrated in a controlled laboratory environment.
The Swedish vendor noted that improved connectivity will support activities such as video streaming, online gaming,and faster downloads in high-traffic areas like stadiums, shopping centers and transportation hubs.
The increased capacity also supports emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), which require high data throughput.
The achievement took place at Telstra’s Innovation Center on the Gold Coast. A live mobile site was equipped with Ericsson’s Radio System base station, running t5G Advanced software. MediaTek provided the device-side platform to leverage the enhanced network capabilities. The configuration used technologies such as New Radio Dual Connectivity (NR-DC) and NR Carrier Aggregation to combine multiple frequency layers, Ericsson said.
On the technical side, the demonstration utilized Ericsson’s RAN Processor 6672 and other hardware, including AIR 5322 and AIR 3258 radios, alongside Radio 4466. These components aggregated spectrum across multiple bands, connected via the low-latency Router 6675 to Ericsson’s Dual Mode Core. MediaTek’s chipset technology enabled the mobile device to handle the increased speeds.
In September 2024, Ericsson and Telstra claimed the first deployment of Ericsson’s 4th generation of Radio Access Network (RAN) purpose-built compute platform in Australia, “paving the way” for a 5G Advanced (5G-A) platform for the country.
At that time, Telstra deployed Ericsson’s RAN Processor 6672 in a baseband pooling configuration — or a Centralized RAN (C-RAN) configuration — which according to the vendor, is delivering more than three times the capacity compared to the previous generation. The C-RAN configuration, explained Ericsson, results in 60% lower energy consumption and enables more flexible operations.
Ericsson also highlighted that Telstra was the first telco to “test, validate and operate commercial traffic on this RAN Compute platform within their C-RAN hubs.” The vendor also stated that this deployment is a key step toward future-proofing the network and lays the groundwork for forthcoming 5G-A and associated technologies.
The new Ericsson platform supports advanced automation and AI/ML capabilities and compared to previous generations, the new RAN processors can have up to 20 times more pre-loaded AI models with higher inference capacity.
In February, Telstra and Ericsson had announced plans to deliver 5G network slicing services for Australian enterprises as part of their existing partnership.
The pair said they had completed the first phase of work to enable slice-based use cases like fixed wireless access (FWA), broadcasting, automotive connectivity, stadium or precinct services on Telstra’s 5G network.
