Up to 979 Mbps on the downlink and up to 129 Mbps on the uplink — that’s what speedtest.net confirms has been achieved in a User Datagram Protocol test (used for realtime applications, like voice and video over the internet) of Telstra’s live LTE network.
That’s an improvement of almost 200 MBps since February, and one step closer to Telstra’s 1Gbps goal.
On top of just-shy-of-a-gigabit download speeds, Telstra is getting close to tripling the current maximum uplink speed seen in most LTE networks globally. Increasing social sharing and video uploads is driving the need for higher uplink performance for smartphone users across the network, Telstra says, and improving uplink speeds is also important for remote and onsite workers use of enterprise cloud applications for unified communications — especially video-conferencing apps.
Mike Wright, Group Managing Director Networks at Telstra says 1Gbps speeds will bring both speed and capacity outdoors, along with deeper coverage and performance indoors.
Telstra and Ericsson engineers utilised LTE Advanced carrier aggregation, 64 QAM uplink, 256 QAM downlink and 4×4 MIMO technologies along with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE modem for the test.
Serge Willenegger, Senior Vice President of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, said the joint demonstration is a “significant milestone toward our universal wireless gigabit vision.”