Australia's Telstra Successfully Makes World's First 2Gbps-Capable Data Call

In a significant development, Ericsson, Telstra, and Qualcomm have successfully completed the worlds first 2Gbps-capable 4G data call using the live commercial network in Queensland, Australia.

"Together with technology partners Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, Telstra has made the world's first 2Gbps-capable 4G data call using our mobile network in the regional centre of Toowoomba in Queensland," Channa Seneviratne, Executive Director, Network and Infrastructure Engineering - Telstra Operations, said in a statement on Wednesday.

This call follows the 2Gbps speed demonstration at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February and the further testing in Sweden in June.

"This is the first time the technology has been taken out of the lab and deployed using a real commercial network," Seneviratne said.

The live call was achieved using Qualcomm Technologies' mobile test platform powered by the Snapdragon X24 LTE modem - an Ericsson Radio System base-station Ericsson's Network Software and Ericsson core network.

Success in 5G will depend on a strong underlying 4G network, and this LTE data call over Telstra's live commercial network is an important step forward in the development of 5G.

"We expect to deploy 2Gbps enabled 4G technology in select locations later in 2018," informed Seneviratne.