Ericsson and Qualcomm will provide a live demonstration of Category 11 LTE-A with Telstra at next week’s Mobile World Congress.
Ericsson said the demonstration of tri-band Cat 11, designed to support downlink speeds of up to 600Mbps, will be performed during MWC on a smartphone using Qualcomm’s “next-generation” LTE modem, connected to Telstra’s Ericsson-supplied LTE-A network.
By way of comparison, current-generation LTE Cat 9 chips support up to 450Mbps downlink speeds and up to 50Mbps uplink. The first smartphones sporting LTE Cat 9 SoCs are due to be released later this year.
Ericsson said LTE Cat 11 was ideal for use in both indoor and outdoor small cell networks due to its utilisation of 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), which allows higher peak rates to be achieved within a reduced cell radius.
Serge Willenegger, VP of Product Management at Qualcomm Technologies, said: “We are excited to be contributing to another significant milestone in delivering fast and reliable cellular data and connectivity solutions.
“As wireless data demand continues to grow, we are committed to work with industry leaders like Telstra and Ericsson to further augment the unique mobile broadband experience on LTE networks.”
Ericsson and Qualcomm continue to be active players in the testing and development of LTE technologies.
This week, Qualcomm revealed plans to integrate LTE-U technology, which aggregates licensed and unlicensed spectrum, into its small cells and radio transceiver portfolios.
Earlier in February, Ericsson and Qualcomm demonstrated successful tests of Licence Assisted Access (LAA) LTE, registering speeds of 450Mbps.
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