US mobile operator Sprint and Ericsson of Sweden are carrying out a live demonstration of ‘Gigabit-Class’ data speeds over a time division duplex LTE (TD-LTE) system at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona. The demo, which is claimed to be an industry first, uses LTE technology advances to show 1Gbps performance over 60MHz of TD-LTE spectrum. When deployed, Sprint claims its customers will benefit from faster mobile data speeds and a better user experience. ‘This demonstration highlights the incredible capacity and potential of Sprint’s 2.5GHz spectrum holdings and our ability to keep meeting customers’ growing demand for high speed bandwidth-intensive applications,’ commented Sprint’s CTO John Saw.
The demo utilises Ericsson’s LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) features including 4×4 MIMO, 256 QAM, Ericsson Lean Carrier and tri-band carrier aggregation (3C) of 60MHz of spectrum in the 2.5GHz (B41) band. Sprint and Ericsson will also be working together to test 5G technologies such as Massive-MIMO for TD-LTE using the vendor’s 5G-ready radio (AIR6468) during the second half of 2017.