Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies said they achieved an industry first with commercial silicon and network infrastructure, delivering 1.07Gbps download speeds over a Cat 18 LTE network. The companies used the Qualcomm Snapdragon X20 LTE modem, the first announced modem to support Category 18 LTE speeds, during an Ericsson lab trial.
This achievement builds on the recent announcement by the partners about gigabit LTE with support for License Assisted Access (LAA). Also of significance, the 1.07 Gbps speed was achieved using only three 20MHz carriers of FDD spectrum, achieving new levels of spectral efficiency for commercial networks and devices. These efficiencies will enable the delivery of the gigabit experience to more customers and lead to new wireless innovations, Verizon said.
In the lab, the 1.07 Gbps speeds were achieved using all licensed band combinations with 12 LTE streams with tri-cell carrier aggregation of FDD spectrum, 4x4 MIMO per carrier, as well as 256 QAM per carrier.
