YOTA Networks and Huawei claim launch of Carrier Aggregation as "world's first" LTE-A network
Huawei Russian operator YOTA Networks today announced "the launch of the world’s first LTE-Advanced commercial* LTE network in Moscow".
Huawei has enabled Carrier Aggregation technology, which it said provides downlink peak rates of up to 300Mbps depending on the capacity of the radio channel, on the SingleRAN LTE/EPC solution that Yota has deployed for its LTE network. As Carrier Aggregation is specified under 3GPP's R10, the companies have labelled the deployment as constituting the first LTE-Advanced network.
Sergey Varyukhin, Key Account Department Vice President for Huawei in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Armenia, said, “We are proud to be selected as a partner of YOTA Networks and we fully intend to support YOTA in the launch of their most advanced services yet. To date, Huawei has realised a large number of commercial LTE projects across many countries, and the launch of the first test* LTE-A network in Moscow is a major step in the development of mobile broadband access markets around the world.”
You can read more about planned operator deployments of 3GPP R10 features and enhancements in the latest issue of Mobile Europe.
* There seems to be some variation in Huawei's terminlogy here. Perhaps it's a live commercial test network. We'll find out.