Telstra and Ericsson make it to 1 Gbps speeds

Telstra has announced that in partnership with Ericsson the companies have achieved a world-first test of 1 Gbps capability on its commercial mobile network which ‘pushes LTE beyond the 4G barrier’ promising even faster speeds and enhanced consumer experience into the future.

In a blog post, Telstra’s Group MD of Networks, Mike Wright, said the company — following on from its previous launch of 600 Mbps capability — successfully tested 1 Gbps speed capability by aggregating together 100 MHz of Telstra’s spectrum holdings across five separate 4G channels integrated on its commercial end-to-end network.

“Many may be aware of the debate some years ago around the technical definition of what 4G should be, with a widely accepted view that 4G should achieve peak speeds in the range of 1 Gbps,” said Wright.

“In the end, the global consensus was that the term 4G could be applied to any LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology regardless of peak speed capability, but with LTE now reaching 1 Gbps speeds in reality, LTE technology could be argued to be finally moving beyond the 4G barrier.”

Wright said Telstra’s end-to-end tests have been achieving “amazing download speeds of over 950 Mbps” using a specialised speed test application, and demand for a superior user experience is ever increasing as customers are ‘always-on’ and have access to new and advanced technologies.

“The demonstration of 1 Gbps end-to-end capability shows the advanced state of these standards and our ability to rapidly bring them into commercial service in order to deliver increased capacity in our network to meet the growing demand,” Wright added.

“In addition to Telstra consumer customers, we are preparing our networks for growth in business use, as well as emerging technologies, which rely on our ability to deliver high-capacity and low-latency solutions.”

There are currently no handsets or devices capable of working with the combined five carrier LTE signal, and Telstra has not said when or whether it is planning on launching commercial services.

Image credit: Mike Wright, GMD Networks, with the live network equipment used to support the end-to-end test. Courtesy of Telstra Exchange.