MTS has deployed Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in Ufa City, Russia, as part of the strategy to deliver Gigabit LTE speeds.

Ericsson said this is the first LAA rollout in the region and is part of the agreement entered by MTS and Ericsson in 2017 to upgrade the MTS network with Ericsson Radio System and core network solutions and prepare for 5G and IoT.

This is the first LAA network in Russia and Eastern Europe and an important milestone on the way to 5G.

“LAA will allow us to build gigabit LTE networks quickly and cost-effectively in places with active traffic consumption, where operators do not have enough frequencies in the licensed spectrum,” Andrey Ushatsky, vice president, Technology and IT, MTS, said.

MTS deployed the LAA technology in a large trade center on May 17 following a series of tests conducted on a live MTS network using a commercial smartphone.

MTS has achieved gigabit-per-second speeds using Ericsson Radio software, including 256-QAM and 4CC Carrier Aggregation of 10 streams with 4×4 MIMO on a 20MHz licensed carrier coupled with 3x20MHz LAA.

MTS also used a range of Ericsson Radio System products including LAA-powered Radio 2205, Baseband 5216, and B3 1800MHz band configured Radio 2212 in the rollout of the LAA technology.