Trial blends licensed and unlicensed spectrum; reached access speeds of more than 274 Mbps
Mobile operator Vodafone Netherlands said it carried out a trial delivering LTE services on a commercial network by aggregating both licensed and unlicensed bands.
The trial was carried out in cooperation with Qualcomm and Swedish vendor Ericsson. Vodafone said the test used an Ericsson RBS 6402 small cell and a test device powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X12 modem. During the trial, the mobile operator said it achieved download speeds of more than 274 megabits per second by aggregating 20 megahertz of licensed spectrum in the 1800 MHz band and 20 megahertz on the unlicensed 5 GHz band.
“Adding unlicensed spectrum to our existing licensed spectrum will enable us to use spectrum more efficiently and increase the capacity of Vodafone networks. The 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum band, targeted using this license assisted access technique, is less crowded than licensed bands, with up to 600 [megahertz] of spectrum available,” Vodafone said. “That means our customers would be able to download data faster, a particular benefit when undertaking demanding online activity, such as watching videos or playing games.”
Vodafone also said it’s closely working with Chinese vendor Huawei on an additional live trial, which is expected to be completed this year, and is encouraging other equipment and chipset vendors and various mobile device manufacturers to build a strong LAA ecosystem to benefit mobile customers.
The operator said it is committed to developing LAA within the 3GPP standards process and has no plan to roll out the technology in Europe until that is concluded. According to Vodafone, the LAA standards should be finalized in 3GPP Release 13 in 2016.
TIM launches 300 Mbps LTE-A service in Rome
In related EMEA news, Italian mobile operator TIM, which is owned by Telecom Italia, launched LTE-Advanced services in Rome. The telco said it expects to commercially launch the service in other cities in the coming weeks.
In July, TIM completed trials of tri-band carrier aggregation technology in partnership with Ericsson and Qualcomm. During the trial, the telco used frequencies in the 800 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2600 MHz bands.
TIM initially launched LTE services in November 2012 through spectrum in the 1800 MHz band. The operator’s LTE-A network made its debut in November 2014, offering access speeds of up to 220 Mbps.
According to the company’s latest financial results, TIM ended the third quarter of the year with 30 million subscribers in the mobile segment, including 3.4 million LTE customers.
