The race to 5G mobile wireless speed is on and the tandem of wireless tech giants Qualcomm and Ericsson are off to a very impressive start. One key part in getting to a 300 mbps wireless throughput is making use of both licensed and unlicensed radio spectrums to enable top speeds of 300 mpbs indoors. This is made possible by taking the spectrum normally used up by Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in indoor networks.
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To highlight this breakthrough 5G technology, equipment vendor Ericsson and chipmaker Qualcomm demonstrated this past week its LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U) technology’s ability to tap into both the unlicensed and licensed segments of bits of the 5GHz spectrum to achieve wireless data throughput speeds of 300 Mbps.
The demo was performed in China employing a 2G multi-standard, multi-band indoor picocell base station, Wi-Fi support and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with X12 LTE.
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This demonstration is quite important because it signifies an important step forward to a leap in mobile data transmission speed as well as a way forward to reducing data congestion within a unified network. The latter feature is quite interesting to many industry players because the LTE-U approach enables carriers to make use of both their unlicensed and licensed bands. This would give mobile telcos the ability to better serve one of the fastest growing segments of the mobile data market-indoor traffic data.
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In terms of the most immediate practical impact of the high speeds enabled by LTE-U, service providers are looking to give smartphone users better experiences with their choice apps.