China's Huawei, Vodafone and Qualcomm Technologies, have joined hands to create the world's first network ready to use License Assisted Access (LAA) technology, in Turkey.
The introduction of LAA on mobile networks will help improve the user experience of consumers by enabling faster download speeds.
Huawei said that the LAA-ready network was tested using a its Lampsite base station in Vodafone Turkey’s Arena Store in Istanbul.
It used 40MHz of unlicensed spectrum in 5GHz and 15MHz licensed spectrum in 2.6GHz for three carrier aggregation. The on-site peak download speed of 370Mbps was achieved using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with X16 LTE mobile test device, the company said.
The on-site test also showed that the spectral efficiency of LAA is higher than Wi-Fi when using the same 40MHz of spectrum.
“LAA technology will help Vodafone to improve the experience our customers have. The LAA network fully reuses the existing core network, network management system and accounting system we use for 4G, and so will effectively improve our return on investment,"
Santiago Tenorio, Head of Networks for Vodafone Group said in a joint statement.
The test also showed that an LAA network can fairly coexist with Wi-Fi technology by supporting the 3GPP R13 standard for ’listen before talk’ technology. 3GPP's LAA standard was finalized in March 2016. The current series of Huawei small cell products can fully support LAA. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with X16 LTE is in production now and supports LAA technology. Consumers can expect smartphones with support for LAA this year.
"For the spectrum, the industry has two main demands. The most important one is to promote continuous innovation in the industrial chain to enhance the overall efficiency of spectrum utilization, and to provide better experience of connectivity," Ryan Ding, president of Huawei products and solutions, said.