Monaco Telecom announced that its LTE service is now capable of offering a peak theoretical speed of 1 Gbps, after deploying a core network upgrade and a cloud RAN solution developed by its technology partner Huawei. The service relies on four-channel carrier aggregation, using 2.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz and 800 MHz spectrum, and is compatible with Category 16 LTE handsets supporting 4×4 MIMO. The first smartphones able to deliver the increased bandwidth should be on the market by the end of the quarter, said the company, which described the launch of the technology as a world first.
Monaco Telecom’s Chief Technical & IT Officer Patrick Bouffel told Les Echos that the upgraded network is currently delivering an average bandwidth of 100 Mbps across the principality.
