Telecom Italia (TIM) has reached 2 Gbps on a 5G live commercial network in partnership with Ericsson and Qualcomm, the first time a European operator has hit such speeds on a permanent basis. The company used 200 MHz of the 26 GHz band spectrum that it acquired in last year’s record-breaking tender of frequencies, as well as an additional 200 MHz made available as part of the auction’s ‘club use’ clauses.
In a statement, TIM confirmed that it used a standard 3GPP Non-Stand Alone (NSA) solution to reach the record speeds on an Askey CPE RTL0200 powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem. The system allows devices and network components from different providers to interact and aggregate TIM’s 4G and 5G network, already implemented in 3.7 GHz spectrum.
TIM added that it expects to see its available bandwidth increase to 800 MHz and 1,000 MHz in 2020, further boosting performance on the 5G commercial network it activated last year. It said the 26 GHz mmWave frequencies also fit the further development of 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services as well as the creation of “dedicated” 5G indoor coverage and new Industry 4.0 scenarios.
The operator recently announced that top 5G speeds on its network will gradually increase from 2 Gbps to a potential 10 Gbps by 2021, by which time 245 industrial districts and 200 large companies as well as around 22 percent of the population will be covered thanks in part to the use of FWA technology.
