Swedish vendor Ericsson has announced that it is working with Qualcomm Technologies and several major wireless operators carriers to trial unlicensed Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology using the 5GHz band. Referred to as Licence Assisted Access (LAA) or LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U), Ericsson confirmed that the platform achieved peak downlink transmission speeds of 450Mbps in laboratory conditions in Ottawa, Canada and Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson’s LTE-U tests have essentially aggregated licensed and unlicensed spectrum bands, pairing a 20MHz block of licensed spectrum with a 40MHz block of unlicensed 5GHz Wi-Fi spectrum.
Leading mobile operators Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile US and SK Telecom (SKT) have all thrown their weight behind LTE-U to date, with SKT’s Park Jin-hyo commenting: ‘SK Telecom is very active in the development of 5G technologies, which will be an extension and evolution of our LTE network. We are delighted to achieve the successful trial of the 450Mbps LAA and fair-sharing technology with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies and will continue to work closely with them to secure advanced network technologies.’