Nokia and T-Mobile achieve ground-breaking LTE speeds near 1 Gbps

Nokia and T-Mobile have achieved LTE speeds near 1 Gbps in a demonstration using Nokia's deployed 4.5G Pro technology. The demonstration, conducted at T-Mobile's lab in Bellevue, Washington, encompassed technologies currently live in the operator's network, including carrier aggregation, 256 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) and 4x4 MIMO (Multiple Input and Multiple Output) on Nokia's commercially available radio access hardware. With Category 16 (Cat 16) capable devices becoming commercially available in early 2017, the solution enables an even faster network for T-Mobile. Currently, the network provides speeds up to 400 Mbps.

Adding to its many innovations in telecommunications, T-Mobile has already launched 4x4 MIMO, carrier aggregation and 256 QAM modulation to provide ultra-high speed services and a superior customer experience to its subscribers nationwide. With the availability of Cat 16 devices, it will be possible to achieve nearly 1 Gbps speeds when combining all three of the technologies, which the joint demonstration of Nokia's 4.5G Pro successfully proved.

Nokia 4.5G Pro and 4.9G were launched in September 2016, highlighting the company's innovations in achieving ultra-high speeds and in enabling operators to significantly enhance LTE and prepare for the path to 5G. The technology allows leading operators such as T-Mobile to take advantage of major increases in speed and capacity where and when they need it.

Overview of the demo solution:

• Three-carrier aggregation technology using Bands 2 and 66.
• 4X4 MIMO technology for doubling peak speeds.
• 256 QAM, which is a higher order modulation scheme that allows an increase in peak data rates of up to 30% compared to 64 QAM.
• Nokia commercial LTE eNodeB.

Neville Ray, CTO, T-Mobile, said: "We've had the fastest LTE network for the last three straight years, but we never stop innovating. We demonstrated nearly 1 Gbps speeds over the air on LTE with our long-standing strategic partner, Nokia, to show how much more our network can do to achieve higher speeds and superior performance."

Ricky Corker, EVP and Head of North America, Nokia, said: "We are committed to supporting T-Mobile with our latest technology innovations, and working alongside them to show what the future of mobile communications can be for their Un-carrier customers. Use of three-carrier component aggregation with 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM is the perfect solution for T-Mobile as it looks to optimize network performance with available spectrum. With this demonstration, we are preparing the T-Mobile network to launch the highest speeds possible."

Source: Nokia release