Ooredoo Qatar, Nokia Networks and Netgear have announced a 590Mbps speed test using LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) Category 11 technology on Ooredoo’s network, which the partners claimed as a record for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. The speed was achieved by aggregating 60MHz of spectrum across three bands and applying 256QAM higher order modulation. Ooredoo recently signed an agreement with Netgear to launch a new range of LTE and LTE-A smart devices in Qatar, and the 590Mbps result was achieved on the Netgear Aircard AC810S mobile hotspot, which supports tri-band carrier aggregation (in Cat 11 mode enabling speeds of up to 600Mbps). Plans are in place for Ooredoo to launch the device commercially in 2016.
Coinciding with the speed test, Ooredoo announced the commercial launch of the LTE-A Cat 6 Netgear AirCard 790S Mobile Hotspot, which uses 802.11ac Wi-Fi and carrier aggregation (CA) technology to deliver download speeds of up to 300Mbps.
Ooredoo Qatar has more than 1,030 4G LTE base station sites, and continues to add more every month. In addition, it has completed the upgrade of 544 outdoor sites to LTE-A (‘4G+’) and upgraded 182 indoor sites to 4G and four indoor sites to 4G+, including malls, business centres, residential towers and hotels.