Optus gets 2.3Gbps in Gigasite mobile trial
SingTel subsidiary Optus has teamed up with NSN and Huawei to trial Gigasites in New South Wales, achieving throughput speeds of 2.3 gigabits per second (Gbps).
Optus built the two sites out in St Mary's in Western Sydney, and Lambton, near Newcastle. Throughput speeds were between 1.65Gbps and 2.32Gbps, and utilised 286.8MHz of spectrum in total across seven spectrum bands. It combined the 4G 700MHz, 1800MHz, 2300MHz, 2600MHz, and 3500MHz bands, as well as the 2G 900MHz band, and the 900MHz and 2100MHz 3G bands.
Optus used up to 26 radio modules at each site, with multi-band 10- and 12-port antennas used at the sites.
The Gigasites were connected through Optus' core mobile network for the trial, which was also live for customers at the time.
Optus used 16 test drive vehicles, 21 engineers, 58 LG, Samsung, and Huawei smartphones and dones, and 31 laptops for the trial across the two sites with NSN and Huawei.
Optus' vice president of mobile engineering Andrew Smith said the test will be used to determine future options for Optus' mobile network.
"Optus' market-leading metro spectrum assets mean that we have the capacity to provide exceptional customer experience to our mobile data customers, even under extremely heavy network loads," he said in a statement.
"The trial was conducted on our live network, not in lab conditions — but with real devices, out in the field."