India's First LAA trial with the help of Airtel & Ericsson hits 500 MBPS on smartphones

Bharti Airtel, one of India’s leading Telecom operators and Swedish Multinational networking and Telecommunications Company- Ericsson, announced that they have successfully conducted India’s first Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) trial over a live LTE network.

LAA is a key technology as operators evolve their networks to achieve Gigabit LTE by opening up previously untapped resources of unlicensed spectrum delivering speeds once thought only possible over fiber.

LAA enables the use of unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz band in combination with the licensed spectrum. With this, the subscribers get a massively enhanced mobile broadband experience and ultra-fast speeds while, operators make efficient use of unlicensed spectrum resources.

The trial which was held in an outdoor environment showed that the peak download speed was more than 400 MBPS with coverage of about 180 meters from the base station. In a statement given by the two companies, it was stated that the test was held at Delhi-NCR region.

Airtel used one LTE 5 MHz carrier aggregated with three 20 MHz carriers of unlicensed spectrum. Together with 4CC carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM technologies, the trial was conducted using Ericsson Radio System.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO – Bharti Airtel said: “Airtel has always led the introduction of cutting edge network technologies to serve its customers. We are pleased to partner Ericsson to conduct India’s first LAA trial, which is also a big step towards 5G and Gigabit networks. LAA is an important technology evolution that can truly unlock the power of 4G LTE networks by leveraging unutilized unlicensed spectrum.”

“LAA is a key evolution of mobile technology and we are pleased to be partnering with Airtel to demonstrate the increased capacity, improved speeds and enhanced user experience through the combination of licensed and unlicensed spectrum.” said Nitin Bansal , Head of Network Solutions,South east Asia , Oceania and India states.