Huawei and Telstra have been trialling LTE mobile technology in Melbourne over the past six months and have today announced that in a controlled environment, they were able to get download speeds of 149.4Mbps and upload speeds of 59Mbps. That’s insanely fast!
It’s also not likely to be seen in the real world anytime soon. Fortunately, the trial also included a field trial component, which managed speeds of 69.3Mbps down and 24Mbps up, which is still significantly faster than anything we’ve currently seen.
Both controlled and field trials were conducted using the 1800MHz spectrum, with 20MHz of spectrum allocated for the controlled trial and 10MHz for the field one. On top of the obvious speed factors, the trial also tested a whole heap of other criteria necessary for when Telstra begins to offer LTE services.
We’re still a while away before seeing LTE available to consumers, and it will be interesting to see whether or not battery drain is an issue with LTE compatible devices like it is with the advances in HSPA speeds, but it’s still exciting to know that one day we might get wireless speeds that approach and exceed the current cable speeds…
Image: Telstra
Jake Duyvestyn
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 1:55 PMThe real*
Currently*
spellcheck people!
Sepll Chekc
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 2:09 PMOMG! He spelled it wrong?? Crucify the bastard!
Damn anal retnetive people must have LTE up the you know where connection to pick up on that so quick. Yes I spelled it wrong. So you can point it out.
wsDK_II
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 2:04 PMthere are quite a few spelling errors here… :)
Lukian
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 2:04 PMmicro sd cards can’t write that fast, so this will mostly be used with a usb lte modem or tethering.
Steaming video should improve on lte handsets.
P3t3
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 2:34 PM@Lukian, Yeah bring on the steaming video!
“Steaming video should improve on lte handsets.”
Namarrgon
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 3:15 PMIf by “steaming video” you mean “porn”, then yes, I expect it’ll improve dramatically.
One big advantage to higher speeds on mobiles is simply that, for any amount of data, the transmission time is shorter, thus requiring less power and saving battery life.
Andrew Siers
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 9:13 PMLTE will suck even more battery that current 3G services so although the transmission time will be shorter, the power used will be higher which may balance things out.
Nat
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 9:29 PMIf your current smartphone is less than a year old, consider trying to make it last until Telstra’s LTE network is set up.
Kroo
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 10:36 PMAnd with this ever increasing mobile bandwidth rolling out, our “knowledgable” government still wants to rush out and blow $42 bil on one single infrastructure. If the NBN goes ahead, progress on pushing faster mobile bandwidth out will grind to a halt and with more mobile devices being used this means death. Why high bandwidth mobile hubs haven’t been considered in this “scheme” just boggles the mind. Roof insulation and BER all over again.
glennc
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 10:08 AMthere is always one
PsychoSmiley
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 3:22 PMTry some latency sensitive applications on wireless like that and report back to us will you?
Shared bandwidth + latency are two reasons why this isn’t the solution for NBN.
level380
Friday, December 17, 2010 at 9:15 AMLTE like current 3G network is shared bandwidth, the more users you add on it, the slower it gets! To deliver LTE at 100mb+ you will need a base station at the end of every street in Melbourne and a fiber network to connect each base station to provide the bandwidth.
wd_dsk
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 10:01 AM149.4 Mbps is very crazy super fast, but let’s not forget that LTE, like the 3G network, is a shared resource among mobile subscribers. So if you have 149 mobile subscribers attached to that cell, your down to 1 Mbps. I guess you will get some pretty good data throughput rates at 6 in da morning.
keira13
Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 7:09 PMthis will radically shift marketing focus from online to mobile with the speed of broadcast and handset mobility combined. plus most mobile phones coming out can perform computer functionalities.