Telstra launches Gigabit LTE in key CBDs

Australia’s Telstra has launched the world’s first commercial Gigabit LTE network in the central business districts of key state capital cities.

The operator’s LTE-A network in these CBDs has been upgraded to support 4X4 multiple input multiple output (MIMO), three carrier aggregation and 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) on the downlink.

The network also supports 64QAM and two carrier aggregation on the uplink for a peak upload speed of 150Mbps.

Telstra, Ericsson, Qualcomm and Netgear jointly developed the first Gigabit-class commercially ready LTE network and Gigabit-class mobile device in October.

Netgear’s Gigabit LTE device, the Nighthawk M1, will launch in Australia late this month, which will allow customers to use the Gigabit LTE service. The Nighthawk M1 utilizes 4×4 MIMO to support 4-way receive diversity.

“Gigabit LTE is also an important step on our journey to 5G and demonstrates Telstra’s commitment to delivering Australians a world class network now and into the future,” Telstra group managing director for networks Mike Wright said.

“We are well placed to evolve our 4G network and are putting the building blocks in place for Australia to be ready for 5G – this will deliver more bandwidth and lower latencies which are critical for emerging applications such as downloading 4K video, IoT, autonomous vehicles, augmented reality and shared virtual reality.”