T-Mobile Claims Over 1.1 Gbit/s in Latest Gigabit LTE Tests
US operators battle for pole Gigabit LTE position, but mostly in the lab, not the real world, so far.
![T-Mobile Claims Over 1.1 Gbit/s in Latest Gigabit LTE Tests T-Mobile Claims Over 1.1 Gbit/s in Latest Gigabit LTE Tests](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt23eb5bbc4124baa6/bltf3253c29056fe0aa/64885212c62638785f0518fc/LR_generic_image.png?width=850&auto=webp&quality=95&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
Ahead of Mobile World Congress Americas next week, US operators are eagerly claiming to be the fastest with Gigabit LTE speeds, at least in lab tests.
T-Mobile US Inc. said Friday that it has achieved "a record" 1.175 Gbit/s in a lab test with Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) This beats Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)'s previous US best of 1.07 Gbit/s in the lab. (See Verizon & Friends Bust Through Gigabit LTE in the Lab.)
See the video from T-Mobile here:
Want to learn more about Gigabit LTE? Join us for our FREE LTE Advanced Pro and Gigabit LTE: The Path to 5G breakfast event taking place at Mobile World Congress Americas on September 13 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Moscone Center in San Francisco. Register today!
T-Mobile says the test used the now-usual palette of technologies to achieve the speeds, including:
Nokia "4.9G" powered by an AirScale basestation
A Snapdragon X20 LTE modem mobile test device, supporting downlink LTE Category 18 for theoretical peak download speeds up to 1.2 Gbit/s
12 independent streams of LTE data
4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM and three-carrier aggregation across 60MHz of downlink spectrum on T-Mobile's network
So how relevant is this to an actual user? Well, Qualcomm has previously said that a user with a compatible device will get between 100 Mbit/s and 300 Mbit/s on a real-world network. (See When Is a Gig Not a Gig? When It's Gigabit LTE!)
The whole push towards faster speeds and lower latencies on mobile 4G networks, however, could give some users pause about a switch-over to 5G as that arrives in 2018 and 2019. Especially as much of the early hype around 5G is concerned with fixed services, particularly in the US.
— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading
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