News
Swedish mobile operator combines three carriers to achieve a maximum theoretical speed up 450 Mbps.
Telenor Sweden has become the latest mobile operator to employ 3x carrier aggregation (3CA) techniques on its LTE-Advanced network to boost data download and upload speeds.
The operator, which previously enabled 2CA in over 200 municipalities in Sweden, has now activated 3CA in almost 400 locations for further speed benefits through the combination of three separate carriers.
It noted that 3CA is “theoretically” able to support download speeds of up to 450 Mbps, but concede that there is a big gap between theory and practice.
“In order to reach these speeds you need good coverage, the maximum available bandwidth per frequency and the correct performance of your phone,” the operator said.
It noted that 2CA is now “relatively well spread” among category 6 smartphones in the market but said 3CA or category 9 smartphones are still “around the corner” for most people with only a few models currently available on the market.
In June this year, the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) said the deployment of LTE-Advanced systems for Category 6 user devices is a major trend
The GSA said that of 5,614 LTE user devices announced in total, 314 devices supported category 6 speeds and 43 devices supported category 9.
GSA VP Alan Hadden said that 25% of operators have launched LTE-Advanced networks, including seven LTE-Advanced Pro networks.
“New higher performing smartphones and other devices are expected to be announced in 2H 2016 in support of the introduction of Gigabit-capable LTE networks,” he added.
Indeed, LTE-Advanced networks supporting speeds of up to 1 Gbps through the use of 4CA are no longer a distant promise it seems, with many operators announcing successful trials.
For example, Finnish operator Elisa recently claimed a new world record for 4G data download speeds, saying it achieved 1.9 Gbps on a 4G test network using Huawei technology.
