Optus on Thursday switched on its tri-carrier LTE-Advanced network in Melbourne’s central business district.
The Australian operator has aggregated 15 MHz of paired 1800-MHz spectrum and two 20-MHz blocks of unpaired 2.3-GHz spectrum, making it a hybrid FDD/TDD network.
Tests carried out ahead of the network’s launch in Newcastle last month achieved a peak connecti on speed of 317 Mbps.
The launch of Optus’ tri-carrier LTE-A network in Melbourne comes a day before Samsung’s latest flagship devices are due to go on sale there. Unveiled in mid-August, the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 are equipped with the LTE category 9 modules required to connect to the new network.
"With even more category 9 devices on the way, we will roll out more upgrades across the Optus 4G Plus network so that our customers can take full advantage of the latest technology," said Ben White, vice president of mobile marketing at Optus, in a statement.
Optus is not alone in aggregating TDD and FDD spectrum.
3 Hong Kong is well on the way to rolling out a hybrid tri-carrier LTE-A network. It is combining a block of paired 1800-MHz spectrum with a block of paired 2.6-GHz spectrum and an unpaired block of 2.3-GHz spectrum.
The operator plans to launch its network early next year.
Both 3 Hong Kong and Optus are using equipment supplied by Huawei.
