TeliaSonera has begun testing LTE-Advanced in the Danish capital Copenhagen, with a view to rolling it out throughout the country during the rest of the year.
The operator is testing carrier aggregation (CA) with 20 MHz of 1800-MHz spectrum and 20 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum. It is also testing CA with another two 20-MHz blocks of 2.6-GHz spectrum.
The upgraded network will have a theoretical peak throughput of 300 Mbps, compared to 150 Mbps for ‘standard’ LTE.
"Carrier aggregation provides more ‘space’ on the 4G network because the digital ‘highway’ has twice as many tracks. That means even more traffic can pass through at a higher speed than otherwise," noted Henrik Kofod, technical director at Telia Denmark, in a statement last week.
So far TeliaSonera has upgraded just one mast to LTE-A, which has also become known as 4G+, but once the tests are complete it aims to increase this to "a larger number of sites" over the coming months.
Kofod mentioned some of the network issues that CA goes some way towards solving, such as improving signal strength over long distances and indoors.
"Although we already have a very strong network, it is the sensitive equipment we are dealing with, and even th e leaves on the trees can affect the network experience in the summer compared to the winter months," he explained. "Therefore it is of great importance when carrier aggregation increases bandwidth and lets the signal penetrate better."
TeliaSonera is playing catch-up in Denmark to incumbent telco TDC, which launched an LTE-A network in early July.
TDC’s LTE-A network is available in select areas of Copenhagen, as well as parts of the major cities of Aalborg, Aarhus, Esbjerg, Holstebro, Næstved, Odense, Slagelse, and Viborg.
