Singtel and Ericsson have announced they have achieved the world's first 1Gbps mobile peak speed over a quad-band FDD/TDD carrier aggregation (CA) network.
Following the successful trial of Ericsson's quad-band FDD/TDD CA technology, Singtel plans to progressively deploy it at key high traffic locations across Singapore.
The deployment will allow Singtel to optimize the use of its newly-acquired 2500-MHz spectrum. During last year's $S1.14 billion ($860.9 million) million spectrum auction, Singtel paid S$563.7 million for 75MHz of total spectrum, as well as a right of first refusal to 15MHz of spectrum in the 2.5-GHz band. The deployment will also support Singtel's evolution towards 5G.
The first handsets supporting the 1Gbps speeds offered by the networking technology are expected to hit the market in the second half of the year.
Singtel said existing smartphone users can expect 20% faster mobile broadband speeds on average due to the use of Ericsson's Bandwidth-Aware CA feature, which allows smartphones to automatically select the best spectrum band combination available for optimal speeds.
“As the world prepares for the 5G era, Singtel is leveraging its spectrum assets and the latest advancements in mobile technology to optimize our network usage,” Singtel group CTO Mark Chong said.
“Singtel will continue to fully integrate our current capabilities and spectrum assets with cutting-edge technology solutions to ensure that we provide customers a future-ready, ultra-fast and low latency mobile network.”