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Tom Dymond/REX
Huawei, Qualcomm and EE have teamed up a successful trial of next generation 4G topping speeds of 410Mbps.
Chinese manufacturer Huawei joined forces with UK phone network EE and US chipmaker Qualcomm for the trial of LTE category 9 technology. The trial’s 410Mbps download speeds point the way towards ever-more dizzying data speeds as consumers use their mobiles for more and more data-heavy tasks.
The test also paves the way for EE to increase its capacity — and in turn increase speeds — by using carrier aggregation. 4G allows a network to use different parts of its spectrum as one pipe, even if those parts of the spectrum aren’t next to each other. In this case, it’s possible to aggregate 20MHz of 1800MHz spectrum with another 20MHz of 2.6GHz, and a third carrier of 15MHz of 2.6GHz.
The test used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with integrated LTE-Advanced next-generation modem. Huawei reckons it’s the first successfully completed trial of its kind in Europe.
4G launched in the UK in 2012. EE was the first network to offer 4G, using Huawei kit for the infrastructure. The most advanced 4G available is next generation LTE-Advanced technology, which you can enjoy in London. Currently, we’re up to LTE-Advanced Category 4, which allows speeds of up to 150Mbps, but there aren’t many Category 4 devices yet.
