Ericsson, MTS, Qualcomm join hands to deliver Gigabit LTE download speeds

Ericsson, Russian telco MTS, and the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) together with Qualcomm Technologies have jointly deployed Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) technology in Ufa City, Russia.

According to Ericsson, this was the first commercial LAA roll-out in the region. It is part of the agreement entered by MTS and Ericsson in 2017 to upgrade the MTS network with Ericsson Radio System and core network solutions and prepare for 5G and IoT.

LAA is an important technology in the LTE network evolution to 5G, which will provide access to new unlicensed frequencies.

"This is the first LAA network in Russia and Eastern Europe and an important milestone on the way to 5G. LAA will allow us to build gigabit LTE networks quickly and cost-effectively in places with active traffic consumption, where operators do not always have enough available frequencies in the licensed spectrum," Andrey Ushatsky, Vice President, Technology and IT, MTS, said.

With this milestone, MTS has surpassed its previous 700Mbps speed record, enabling the service provider to take the next step in turning its mobile infrastructure into gigabit-capable.

Yulia Klebanova, Vice President of Business Development, Qualcomm Europe, Inc., said, "Gigabit LTE can help operators increase network throughput and achieve higher spectral efficiency, providing incredible network speeds to users of mobile devices powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE modems with LAA support, including Snapdragon 835 and 845 Mobile Platforms."

The deployment took place in a large trade center on May 17 following a series of tests conducted on a live MTS network using a commercial smartphone.

The gigabit-per-second speeds were achieved using Ericsson Radio System software, including 256-QAM and 4CC Carrier Aggregation of 10 streams with 4x4 MIMO on a 20MHz licensed carrier coupled with 3x20MHz LAA.

Sebastian Tolstoy, Head of Ericsson Russia, says: "LAA gives service providers access to new spectrum, increasing network capacity and supporting both higher peak rates and higher-than-average speed rates and this commercial LAA rollout marks another important milestone in our strategic cooperation with MTS."