Telstra preparing mobile network for 1Gbps speeds ‘later in 2016’

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news Telstra has made a raft of announcements this week, including the launch of 1Gbps speeds on its mobile networks in certain areas.

Making the announcements at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona and on its Exchange blog, the telco said that its mobile network will be enabled to support 1Gbps speeds in select sites across the Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane central business districts “in anticipation of a new device” that will support these speeds being released later in 2016.

Putting 1Gbps (1 gigabits per second) in context, Telstra said the new level of service will make top speeds on the network “about 20 times faster” than they were when it initially released 4G in 2011.

Additionally, uplink speeds are claimed to offer up to 150Mbps on compatible devices.

Telstra also announced a partnership with Ericsson that will see the firm deploy the first 5G trial on its mobile network at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, with the test employing beamforming, MIMO, NFV and SDN technologies.

The trial is aimed to help move the firm closer to its goal of rolling out a full-scale 5G service on its mobile network in the future.

Telstra cites recent trials of 5G producing speeds of more than 11Gbps in a “complex, real-world, indoor setting” at Ericsson’s labs in Sweden.

Telstra will also launch ‘Voice over Wi-Fi’ in the first half of 2016 – a service that switches phone calls between the 4G mobile service and the customer’s home broadband. This will allow users to “walk from room to room and stay connected”, the firm says, and in the future, will evolve to include video calling.

On the subject of video, Telstra said it plans to launch the “next generation of video calling” later this year. Called Video over LTE (ViLTE), the service will allow customers with compatible mobile phones to make “high quality” video calls, with the ability to switch between voice and video mid-call, and set up group video calls too.

Finally, Telstra announced that it has been “progressively enabling” LTE-Broadcast (LTE-B) technology at over 3,000 4GX sites, allowing the firm to broadcast media to a range of metropolitan and regional areas around Australia. The technology will allow the company to transmit broadcasts of live video, including real-time match highlights, in sports stadiums and other venues.

Telstra added that the service will also allow for downloads of “mass device and application software”, and content updates, with other services being possible in future.

Image credit: Telstra

1 COMMENT

  1. Telstra state on their website that 4GX currently has download speeds of “2 to 75Mbps”, so they can soon upgrade it to “2 to 1000Mbps”. Although really, I’ve been pretty happy with my Optus network LTE speeds. If only I had those speeds at home with an unlimited quota.

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