Ukrainian mobile service operator, lifecell, in collaboration with Huawei has recently tested LTE-Advanced Pro feature on its test network, aggregating five FDD bands to reach maximum download speeds of 1.5Gbps. LTE-Advanced Pro or 4.5G is the next wireless upgrade beyond 4G LTE which is faster in providing impeccable user experience and highly efficient in spectrum usage.
With 100% stake owned by Turkcell, lifecell was also the first Operator to launch 3G+ technology with the 3-Carrier HSDPA expansion that reached the maximum download speeds of 63.3 Mbit/s.
To achieve the maximum 1.5Gbps, lifecell aggregated a total of five bands of 100Mhz (5*20Mhz Carriers) on different frequency bands: L2100, L2600, L900, L1800, L800. Aggregation was reached in FDD mode, 4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM with wired connection between mobile terminal and eNodeB which was served by the commercial lifecell Core Network equipment.
lifecell network covers 98.9% of the territory of Ukraine and as of the end of Q2 2016, the active subscriber base of lifecell consisted of 9.7 million users.
Burak Ersoy, CEO, lifecell
As an innovative company we continue to develop our network assets to test the future opportunities and prepare for the launch of the networks of next generation - LTE. For 4G introduction the Ukrainian market should be ready in terms of regulation and 4G-devices penetration - for example, our network with the highest penetration of smartphones has only few percent of devices supporting the LTE standard.
