Residents in Stockholm can soon experience record-setting speeds in Telia’s commercial network, thanks to recent tests by Telia and Ericsson. The tests pushed 4G networks to 757Mbit/s to prove readiness for 5G, and for advanced applications and services like Virtual and Augmented Reality.
Telia’s achievement of 757Mbit/s was achieved with 4G spectrum within 5% of the theoretical top speed achievable with 50 MHz – 800 Mbps. Telia used multiple access technologies to further prepare themselves for 5G.
Peter Malm, head of Network Products for Ericsson in Nordics & Baltics, Ericsson, explained: “By simultaneously transferring parallel data streams over the radio access technology and aggregating spectrum resources, top speeds are increasing. But above all, average speeds are significantly raised.
Pushing the limits now in a commercial network rather than in a lab environment proves that we can drive 4G and 5G development faster and with quality for consumers wanting better picture and sound quality and advanced services.”
Mats Lundbäck, chief technology officer, Telia, said: ”Our goal is to offer our customers a taste of 5G in Stockholm and Tallinn during year 2018. Therefore, for us at Telia, it’s obvious and an important part of our daily work to test our network and show our customers that our network lives up to their demands, today and tomorrow.”
The results of the test will help Telia determine how to develop 4G networks further as well as prepare for the next generation of mobile telephony, 5G. Lundbäck continued: “These tests also help us eliminate any potential bottlenecks in future traffic. The network is developed in concert with special purpose-built tools.”
Peter Malm added: “We performed the test in Stockholm at Bern’s where we know there are a lot of people using plenty of media – this is a stress test that challenged us and we proved our capabilities!”
Devices that could be used on 4G at these speeds will be available later this year from major vendors.
For the speed test, Telia and Ericsson used technology from the Ericsson Radio System.