Airtel-Ericsson 4G Trial Hits 500 Mbps Download Speed on Smartphones

Bharti Airtel and Swedish networking and telecom major Ericsson on Friday said they have achieved a download speed of over 500 Mbps on smartphones during a first-ever live 4G trial in India.

The speed was achieved during a recent indoor trial of Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology over a live 4G long-term evolution (LTE) network in Delhi-NCR.

In an outdoor environment, the peak download speed of more than 400 Mbps was achieved with coverage of about 180 metres from the base station, the companies said in a statement.

"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 unutilised unlicensed spectrum," said Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel.

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 fibre.

The technology enables the use of unlicensed spectrum in the 5GHz band in combination with the licensed spectrum. 

For the trial, 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.

"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," added Nitin Bansal, Head of Network Solutions, South East Asia, Oceania and India at Ericsson.