Vodacom launches LTE-LAA, achieves 653Mbps

Vodacom South Africa has successfully launched a Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) site on its live network at its Midrand campus, demonstrating speeds of 653Mbps via a commercial Motorola Z2 Force handset. Vodacom’s LAA site is said to be the ‘first time in South Africa where four component carrier aggregation (4C) has been deployed on a live LTE network.’ The LAA site on Vodacom’s campus utilises 10MHz of 1800MHz spectrum and three additional carriers each of 20MHz unlicensed 5GHz spectrum, in addition to 4×4 MIMO and 256QAM technologies. Vodacom will soon begin rolling out LAA to other sites on its live network, starting with indoor hotspots such as airports, malls and office buildings. The availability and pricing for LAA capable handsets will be revealed as rollout progresses, the operator said.