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German incumbent, Huawei use 4×4 MIMO, five carriers to reach ultrafast speed on live network.
Deutsche Telekom and Huawei this week reached a peak speed of 1.22 Gbps with an LTE-Advanced Pro demonstration on the operator’s live network.
The test, carried out in Berlin, involved using one of the German incumbent’s macro base stations in tandem with a small cell. The high throughput was achieved by aggregating five carriers and deploying 4×4 multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO).
"Fast Internet access can’t be limited to just fixed lines and fibre optics – our customers also want the highest possible speeds for maximum comfort on the go as well," said Claudia Nemat, Deutsche Telekom board member for Europe and Technology, in a statement on Monday.
"Our network delivers," she said. "We are ahead of our time and ahead of the competition."
Deutsche Telekom said Monday’s demonstration easily broke its previous network speed record in Berlin of 340 Mbps.
"Huawei is happy to support Deutsche Telekom to prove the benefits of the latest evolutionary step of this technology, LTE Advanced Pro, in [a] real field application", Lin Baifeng, president of Huawei’s Deutsche Telekom account.
Deutsche Telekom is one of several operators achieving LTE speeds in excess of 1 Gbps.
Elisa in late August claimed a new LTE world speed record after reaching 1.9 Gbps, albeit under lab conditions.
Meanwhile, Dialog and Mobitel in Sri Lanka, Denmark’s TDC, South Korea’s SK Telecom, Swiss incumbent Swisscom, and Australia’s Telstra are among those to have shared their plans for rolling out LTE-A Pro.
Indeed, the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) said in August that nine LTE-A Pro networks are already up and running, and that it expects commercial Gigabit mobile services to begin rolling out by the end of 2016.
