Huawei and Vodafone have demonstrated the world’s first LTE-Advanced FDD+TDD carrier aggregation service, giving peak downlink speeds of more than 500MBps.
The demonstration, which involved three FDD and 1 TDD carriers, took place at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Vodafone has spectrum across the 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2600MHz bands, with a 50MHz chunk in FDD mode and 20MHz of 2600MHz in TDD mode in Spain.
The network said the demonstration would lead to it boosting its capacity in the Spanish market.
Kevin Salvadori, Director of Group Technology Strategy and Operations at Vodafone, said: “With Vodafone’s spectrum resource, Carrier Aggregation would enable us to utilize our spectrum more efficiently to provide innovative services and a better experience to our customers.”
Steven Hartley, Principal Analyst at Ovum, said: “The benefit of CA across FDD and TDD LTE is that operators can combine cheaper TDD spectrum with more “traditional” FDD spectrum to boost capacity and downlink speeds. In this case the partners are promising over 500Mbps.
The cost efficiencies for an operator of leveraging the full range of spectrum assets available is unquestionable, but most operators have so far shied away from the technical complexities involved.
“Disruptive operator 3 has already announced its intention to utilize FDD and TDD in Italy and Sweden, based on ZTE infrastructure. That an industry (and FDD) stalwart of Vodafone’s scale backs a dual-mode approach is notable, yet this announcement is not a complete surprise. Back in 2009 Vodafone, Verizon, and China Mobile called on vendors to develop equipment and devices supporting both modes. But today’s announcement goes a step further and enables the two modes to be combined.
Furthermore, Vodafone has acquired TDD spectrum in Spain and in the UK’s last spectrum auction, so although today’s news focusses on Spain, we can assume that it will not be an isolated implementation.”