Vodafone, Ericsson and Qualcomm have jointly completed the first live demonstration of LTE carrier aggregation of both licensed and unlicensed spectrum on a commercial network.
The companies used Vodafone's network in the Netherlands to trial combining 20 MHz of licensed 1800-MHz spectrum with 20 MHz of unlicensed 5-GHz spectrum.
A commercial Ericsson indoor picocell and a test device developed by Qualcomm were used in the demonstration
Announcing the results, Ericsson said the testing has validated the performance of LTE in unlicensed wavelengths and its ability to peacefully co-exist with other technologies using the spectrum, such as Wi-Fi.
“The unlicensed 5 GHz band is a shared resource and, as we have seen, it can be aggregated with LTE bands to provide a speed boost for users to improve app coverage, when spectrum is available,” Ericsson head of Western and Central Europe Valter D'Avino said.
“Of course, the user also maintains their connection to Vodafone's highly reliable LTE network, so they have a great connection no matter what.”
Vodafone Netherlands chief network officer Matthias Sauder added that the operator sees LTE aggregation with unlicensed bands on small cells as a way to improve the customer experience.
Ericsson's latest networks software update 16A supports LTE carrier aggregation over the 5-GHz band.