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Optus has officially launched its LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation network using its allotted 2300MHz spectrum.
The service is live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide, with Canberra joining “within weeks”.
Optus uses Time Division LTE (TD-LTE), meaning that the upload and download data are carried on the same frequency, but at different times. For its TD-LTE Carrier Aggregation (TD-LTE CA) this means two 20MHz channels on the 2300MHz spectrum.
According to Optus, this allows for theoretical speeds of 220Mbps, with testing showing peak speeds of up to 160Mbps.
This differs from Telstra’s upcoming LTE-A offering, which will use frequency division LTE (FD-LTE) to aggregate data across two different spectra — in Telstra’s case this will be 700MHz and 1800MHz.
Optus may be the first telco to officially offer LTE-A in Australia, but it will take a little while for it to get any real-world data: there are currently not TD-LTE CA devices available in Australia.
In a media statement, Optus Networks Managing Director Vic McClelland said that there are “at least four” compatible devices being launched locally in the coming months.
Telstra had previously said that the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 would be one of the first devices it expected to see using its LTE-A offering.
