Telia’s ambition is to bring nationwide 5G coverage to Norway by 2023 with tech partner Ericsson.
Telia and Ericsson have initiated a trial of carrier aggregation to extend coverage in Lillestrøm (pictured), a town near Norway’s capital, Oslo, using using 5G New Radio (NR) TDD-FDD.
The plan is that carrier aggregation will enable Telia to maximise its spectrum and extend coverage in the mid-band frequencies (3.6GHz), boosting capacity and increasing peak throughput for faster data speeds.
Successful trial
In the trial, Ericsson and Telia demonstrated more than 50% increase in area coverage via carrier aggregation, with the mid-band TDD bands using the uplink of the FDD band, in the 3.6 GHz band. The 5G Carrier Aggregation also improved download speed further out in the cell.
In the meantime, the two companies are progressing toward Telia’s 2023 goal and are expected to deliver 5G to 19 more cities by mid-2021, with 50% of the country expected to have coverage by the end of 2021.
Espen Weum, Acting Head of Infra at Telia Norway, commented, “We are very proud, together with Ericsson, to be the first in the Nordics to successfully test 5G carrier aggregation…We will begin to roll out carrier aggregation in our network as soon as we have completed the on-going testing phase.”