Ericsson is to enable tri-band carrier aggregation for Singtel and said a trial of TDD-LTE at 3.5GHz for China Mobile had been completed successfully.
Trials will start in Singapore in the second quarter of this year, with Samsung providing devices for Singtel’s tests. Commercial devices are expected to be launched later this year, offering downlink peak speeds of up to 450MBps.
Ericsson will spend the next two years rolling out tri-band LTE-A across the whole of Singapore.
Yuen Kuan Moon, Singtel’s CEO of Consumer Singapore, said: “With smartphone penetration rates of over 85 percent in Singapore, data download speed is very important to our customers. This is why we continue to invest in improving our technology to ensure we deliver the fastest and most consistent experience to our customers.
“When we were the first to introduce speeds of 300 Mbps last year, it was very well received by our customers. This has given us the confidence to further improve and invest in this technology.”
Meanwhile, China Mobile used the 3.5GHz band for TDD carrier aggrehation in tests held with Ericsson in January. The trial aggregated 20MHz in the 3.5GHz band and 20MHz in the 2.6GHz band. The tests also include handover.
A second trial held last month was carried out on China Mobile’s live network.
The 3.5GHz band has been seen as potentially a future harmonised band for TDD-LTE. Japan assigned the band in late 2014 and is expected to have a commercial network launch on that frequency next year.
Dr. Guangyi Liu, CTO of Wireless Department of China Mobile Research Institute, said: “This TDD testing demonstrated that the 3.5 GHz band can be successfully used both in stand-alone mode and in aggregation with existing commercial spectrum band to provide advanced mobile broadband services, using a TDD access scheme for high peak data rate applications to enhance the user experience and operator’s competitiveness.”
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