T-Mobile US recently demonstrated speeds close to 1 Gbps (979 Mbps) on its LTE network in the lab following the introduction of seven LTE Advanced technologies last year - including VoLTE with eSRVCC, Carrier Aggregation, CoMP, SON, HetNets, EVS and higher order modulation.
According to the carrier's CTO Neville Ray, T-Mobile was able to achieve these speeds using three carrier aggregations, 4 x 4 MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) and 256 QAM. The 4×4 MIMO as well as the QAM 256 technologies were announced by the Mobile Operator September last year, with T-Mobile’s LTE network being able to deploy these technologies on the download and QAM 64 on the upload.
Ray said that T-Mobile will be the first carrier in the US to offer 1Gbps speeds to its customers, and added that more improvements are expected in the future.
In his latest blog post, Ray also said that with T-Mobile's Extended Range LTE which is touted to work 4x better in buildings and goes 2x farther from the tower, it now covers over 250 million people in more than 500 metro areas.
Neville Ray, CTO, T-Mobile
The truth is that 5G is about all the as-yet-unimagined possibilities of mobile technology. We see 5G completely transforming the mobile Internet and delivering brilliant breakthroughs. We see a 5G future where every major tech trend that sparks our imaginations – mobile VR, AR, AI and more – will all be made better and available on-the-go because of 5G. Just as 4G spawned the mobile-first Internet and gave rise to applications and devices that have changed how we live, work and play, 5G will unlock experiences we can’t yet imagine. We’ve already demonstrated mobile speeds of 1.8 Gbps, fixed speeds of 12 Gbps with latency under 2 milliseconds, 8x8 MIMO and four simultaneous 4k video streams.
