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Ericsson shows off 900Mbps LTE Advanced

Network technology company Ericsson has successfully tested Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE Advanced) technology in Sweden, achieving download speeds of 900 megabits per second (Mbps).
Written by Josh Taylor, Contributor

Network technology company Ericsson has successfully tested Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE Advanced) technology in Sweden, achieving download speeds of 900 megabits per second (Mbps).

The demonstration was conducted over test spectrum in Kista, Sweden, and used Ericsson's multi-mode, multi-standard radio base station, RBS 6000. Using carrier aggregation, 60MHz of aggregated bandwidth was used to conduct the test between the base station and a roaming van. The company expects LTE Advanced technology to be deployed commercially by 2013.

Although Telstra has marketed its own LTE product as 4G in Australia, LTE Advanced is closer to the requirements outlined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for the 4G label, which is looking for technology that will provide peak download speeds of between 100Mbps and 1Gbps.

According to Ericsson Australia's general manager of strategy Kursten Liens, the benefits offered by LTE come from the increased capacity used by the technology.

"While the demonstration in Sweden achieved download speeds of more than 900Mbps, the real advantage of LTE for operators is the great increase in capacity," he said.

Ericsson said that LTE Advanced's use of carrier aggregation and extended multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) functionality would result in faster access for consumers on a network, even when that network is congested.

The company was recently selected by Telstra to roll out network upgrades to deliver LTE to metropolitan and selected regional centres by the end of this year. When the telco tested LTE last year, it achieved download speeds of 80Mbps between Sydney and Melbourne.

Ericsson was also recently awarded a $1.1 billion contract with the National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co) to implement the fixed-wireless portion of the broadband roll-out, using LTE. This will encompass 4 per cent of the 7 per cent of Australian premises outside of the NBN fibre footprint. The initial product offering on this service will have a maximum 12Mbps download speed, but Ericsson executives said, at the time, that this could be improved later.

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