LTE-A Technology Used to Set Record Speeds

Telstra, one of Australia’s largest telecom companies, began trials of the 4G LTE-A. The 4G LTE-A testing achieved 300 Mbps speeds during the trials on July 31, 2013. Although these record speeds on a commercial network are an impressive achievement, consumers likely won’t see speeds quite so fast when downloading movies to their cell phones.

What is LTE-A? 
LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, a wireless protocol for high speed cell phone and Wi-Fi internet connections. One of the first public LTE service was launched in Europe in late 2009. The International Telecommunications Union or ITU has described LTE-A as true 4G. LTE-Advanced, or LTE-A, uses Carrier Aggregation technology. LTE Carrier Aggregation or LTE CA uses multiple channels with several different LTE carriers to be used to transmit wireless data. It allows more data traffic to travel the network at the same time. If one channel is full, the remaining data can be sent via another channel, preventing slow connection speeds or signal loss.

Why Telecom Companies Want to Use LTE-A 
Because this technology can use multiple bandwidths at once, and the bands do not have to be contiguous, overall bandwidth efficiency is also increased. Spectrum availability is thus less of a problem than cell phones that must use a wide frequency band in the 900MHz or 1800MHz frequency ranges. It also raises the possibility that networks will be able to more efficiently handle existing data traffic without adding dramatically more cell phone repeaters and network capacity to keep up with demand. The telecommunications firms want to use LTE-A because it keeps customers happy while reducing the rate at which they must build an expensive infrastructure in order to keep up with data transfer rates. 

LTE 4G Isn’t Everywhere . . . Yet
Consumers want the high download and upload speeds this technology promises. However, it is limited to a few major metropolitan areas worldwide due to the need to backhaul existing cell phone infrastructures to support it. LTE-A promises to make better use of upgraded equipment. With the proven performance of LTE-A, consumers can expect it to start showing up soon. It is also so fast that it will be in service for years, unlike many 3G systems that are in need of an upgrade because they cannot keep up with users.