While AT&T has already launched its 5G Evolution technology in select markets and is pushing 400Mbps connections, Verizon has a little of its own speed bragging to do this week. Big Red got together with Ericsson and Qualcomm to perform a “dynamic, real-world environment” speed test on their network that clocked just under 1Gbps speeds (953Mbps to be exact).
The three companies used “all commercially available” equipment to achieve those ridiculous speeds, including a radio system from Ericsson that leveraged Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology. LAA, as far as I understand it, uses unlicensed spectrum along with Verizon’s own licensed spectrum to create those speeds. It’s carrier aggregation on steroids in a way, also known as four carrier aggregation. They also used a test device from Qualcomm that featured a Snapdragon 835 and their Gigabit-ready Snapdragon X16 LTE modem.
Now, these speeds aren’t coming to you any time soon from what I can tell. This was one of those test scenarios that Verizon can use to talk about a moment in time while they continue upgrades in order to one day get us these speeds. We may not get there until 5G arrives, but Verizon did point out in their announcement that there are “multiple” devices already on the market that support gigabit speeds.
Cool stuff, though.
// Verizon
