Ericsson has provided Switzerland's leading operator Swisscom with Europe's first fully commercial LTE-Advanced three-carrier aggregation solution combining LTE in both FDD and TDD modes. The demonstration used three carriers in two bands in a radio access network and used commercial-grade chipsets.
The Swiss operator deployed the solution on August 18, 2015 in a Swisscom shop in Zurich, Switzerland, and plans to roll it out to subscribers in Swiss metropolitan areas by summer 2016 to coincide with three-carrier FDD/TDD smartphone availability.
Heinz Herren, CTO, Swisscom, said, "Swisscom innovates to offer customers the best network at all times. With LTE FDD and TDD we are the first provider in Europe to offer a completely new combination of technologies, and in doing so we are underscoring our technological leadership. LTE FDD/TDD will be provided to all our customers at heavily frequented locations from summer 2016."
For the demonstration in Swisscom's live commercial network, two LTE TDD carriers, each with 20 MHz bandwidth in the 2.6 GHz frequency band (B41), and one LTE FDD carrier with 15 MHz in the 2.1 GHz band (B1) were used. The live demonstration in Zurich was supported by Ericsson Radio Access Network software 15B and hardware as well as by the Snapdragon X12 LTE modem. The Snapdragon X12 LTE modem is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated.
The combination of the three carriers in FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE will significantly enhance the future capacity of the network. The new technology will allow more users to benefit from peak data rates for downloads and uploads when using mobile internet, entertainment or enterprise services. In this specific set-up, a maximum 335 Mbps in the downlink was achieved.
Thomas Norén, vice president and head of Radio Product Management, Ericsson, said, "With our R&D investments and extensive work with standards and ecosystem partners, we are committed to helping leading operators stay at the front of technology. With this latest first, we underline our commitment to helping Swisscom bring their subscribers the latest innovations that ensure top network performance and app coverage."
Serge Willenegger, vice president of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, said, "We are pleased to collaborate with Ericsson and Swisscom in having our Snapdragon X12 LTE modem enable another industry milestone toward increased network performance for consumers."