Telstra readies Australia for extreme data speeds with 4G LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation

• Telstra and Ericsson successfully demonstrated speeds up to 300 Mbps with LTE Advanced Carrier Aggregation of 40 MHz over 1800 MHz band and 2600 MHz bands on Telstra's live commercial network
• Ericsson uses LTE Advanced technology to enable operators to offer higher data speeds throughout the network, improving end users mobile broadband experience through better app, browsing and media performance
• Telstra plans to deploy the technology on 700 MHz spectrum once available 

Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) successfully supported Telstra, Australia's leading telecommunication operator, in further enhancing its LTE Advanced (LTE-A) commercial service network.  Telstra and Ericsson successfully demonstrated 300 Mbps downlink speeds for a data transfer across Telstra's live network. The demonstration used Ericsson's commercially released LTE Advanced software which aggregated 20 MHz bandwidth within the 1800 MHz band and 20 MHz bandwidth within the 2600 MHz band. The demonstration included downloading video content from while measuring download throughput.

Mike Wright, Telstra Executive Director Networks, said that the tests were an important foundational step towards being able to deploy Cat 6 LTE Advanced Carrier Aggregation when Telstra receives access to the 700MHz spectrum freed up by the Digital Dividend.

"The trials we conducted overnight demonstrate the ability to aggregate two channels of 20 MHz spectrum on our commercial network. While the download speeds we achieved of 300 Mbps are very impressive, for Telstra the main outcome is that we will be able to build out the capacity in our network to manage the future wireless data needs of our customers and continue to deliver them the most reliable network speeds and experience," said Wright.

Operators who want to offer a superior user experience need to build networks that provide both excellent voice and data coverage so that users can run all their favorite apps, including video, on smartphones and tablets.  

LTE Advanced enables operators to deliver even higher performance mobile data transfer when customers need it. Operators will be able to provide subscribers throughout the network with twice the data speeds that they are receiving today by joining 20 MHz in one band to 20 MHz in another. In ideal conditions, with speeds of up to 300 Mbps, consumers will be able to download a large 800 MB file in approximately 21 seconds.

Thomas Norén, Head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson, said: "We are pleased to show with Telstra the network readiness of LTE Advanced Carrier Aggregation beyond 20 MHz. The delivery of a superior mobile broadband experience remains key as smart device users depend more upon mobile broadband for everyday life. We also look forward to continuing our work with global chipset and handset manufacturers as the Carrier Aggregation ecosystem evolves further."

Ericsson is the market leader in LTE. Today, 50 percent of the world's LTE smartphone traffic is served by Ericsson networks, which is more than double the traffic of our closest competitor. Ericsson also powers the two world's first commercially launched LTE Advanced Carrier Aggregation networks in South Korea.  More than 180 LTE RAN and Evolved Packet Core networks have been delivered worldwide, of which more than 110 have gone live commercially. Ericsson is present today in all high-traffic LTE markets including the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada, and has been selected by nine of the top 10 LTE operators as ranked by LTE subscriptions worldwide. We expect to hold 25 percent of all essential patents in LTE, both for TDD and FDD mode, and we support common hardware and software for FDD and TDD systems, giving operators maximum flexibility in their FDD and TDD deployment.