Australian operator Optus has hit speeds of 2.3GBps in a carrier aggregation project with Nokia Solutions and Networks and Huawei on custom built ‘Gigasites’.
The aim of the test was to measure the total throughput capacity of Optus’ bandwidth for 4G communications. Using NSN’s commercially available Single RAN Advanced, the operator took advantage of six of its existing 3GPP spectrum allocations to build a live network site.
Total capacity measured ranged from 1.65Gbps to 2.32Gbps, with the highest throughput on a single user device amounting to 165Mbps for 3500MHz 4G.
The two live network test sites, located in Sydney and Newcastle, were built with custom equipment from NSN and Huawei.
The operator claimed the mobile towers have the largest number of 4G/LTE layers on a single site, with five, and eight technology/band combinations.
Andrew Smith, Vice-President of Mobile Engineering, Optus said: “With this world first ‘Gigasite’, we are showing the capacity of all our spectrum assets, including our recently purchased 700, 2300 and 2600 MHz bands, by combining multiple layers and technologies onto a single site.
“Trials such as this are vital in enabling Optus to prepare for our network of the future, and support more users and more data per user while at the same time enhancing the customer experience.”
To measure performance, Optus, NSN and Huawei used 16 test drive vehicles, 21 engineers, 58 devices (smartphones and dongles) and 31 laptops.
“The beauty of this trial with Optus is that it uses equipment and technologies already deployed in today’s commercial networks,” said Stephen McFeeley, head of Australia and New Zealand at NSN.
“This is an important step because we foresee that networks will need to be readied to profitably deliver 1 Gigabyte of data per user per day on average by 2020