Ericsson demonstrated LTE Advanced to Sweden's telecom regulator PTS. The demo, held in Kista, Sweden, featured speeds more than 10 times faster than those currently experienced by LTE consumers in Sweden. The system, based on commercial hardware, was operating on a test frequency provided by the PTS. This enabled Ericsson to demonstrate LTE Advanced functionality such as carrier aggregation of 3 x 20MHz (60MHz aggregated) over the air in a mobile environment for the first time. LTE Advanced technology is compliant with the 3GPP Release 10 global standard. Recently, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) also selected LTE Advanced as one of the technologies that fulfils International Mobile Telecommunication's criteria. The first stages of LTE Advanced are expected to be in commercial operation in 2013. The enhancements introduced with LTE Advanced include carrier aggregation and extended multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) functionality. From a user perspective, this means that information can be retrieved and sent much faster, even when the network is congested. This, in combination with the faster speeds, significantly improves the user experience. The demo system was based on Ericsson's multi-mode, multi-standard radio base station, RBS 6000. Live traffic was streamed between the RBS and a moving van from which network performance could be monitored. In the demonstration, 60MHz of aggregated bandwidth was used, compared to the 20MHz maximum that is currently possible using LTE. In the downlink, 8x8 MIMO was used. In 2010, the LTE technology's first year of operation, the number of users with access to LTE networks rose from to 150 million people.
