Telstra LTE trials reach 149.4 Mbps

Telstra and Huawei have successfully demonstrated downlink speeds of 149.4 Mbps during trials of LTE (long term evolution) mobile technology using 1800 MHz spectrum. With trials taking place over the past six months in Box Hill, Melbourne, Telstra and Huawei tested the next-generation mobile technology in both controlled and field environments with peak uplink and downlink speeds more than tripling the throughputs seen on current mobile technology.

“The significance of the trial with Huawei equipment is that it allowed Telstra to test the performance of LTE at 1800 MHz and we were able to test the limits of the technology and explore its performance against a number of criteria,” said Telstra Executive Director Networks & Access Technologies Mike Wright.

“As a technology, LTE has some unique characteristics that result in improved radio network capability and efficiency such as improved capacity and speed,” Wright said.

Telstra and Huawei undertook two sets of tests - one in a controlled lab environment using 20 MHz of bandwidth in the 1800 MHz band and a second set in the field using 10 MHz of spectrum also in the 1800 MHz band. Controlled tests using 20 MHz of spectrum achieved peak downlink speeds of 149.4 Mbps and peak uplink speeds of 59 Mbps, while field trials using 10 MHz of spectrum demonstrated peak downlink speeds of 69.3 Mbps and peak uplink speeds of 24 Mbps.

“As mobile customers move away from 2G services and onto 3G and LTE, 1800 MHz spectrum will increasingly become available to be re-farmed by operators. The overwhelming success of these trials shows that 1800 MHz can be an attractive option for deploying LTE where access to other spectrum bands is constrained,” said Huawei CTO Peter Rossi.

Huawei provided a fully self-contained 1800 MHz LTE-SAE (system architecture evolution) network and facilities, including a small number of base station sites in the Box Hill area, as well as test terminals and IMS (IP multimedia subsystem) test servers for VoD (video on demand) and broadband data testing.

The trial allowed Telstra to test LTE technology against a number of criteria, such as:

• Capacity and coverage of LTE with various radio unit configurations
• Performance of MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) with various antenna configurations - interference management and its performance in a live LTE environment
• Cell handover performance
• Propagation performance
• Latency performance