Sprint has achieved a significant milestone in three-channel carrier aggregation testing by reaching peak speeds of 275 Mbps using the LG G5, one of the first devices on the market to support the functionality.
Sprint is independently testing three-channel carrier aggregation in its labs to evaluate overall performance, speed, and reliability as it prepares for LTE Plus network deployment, the company said in a statement.
Carrier aggregation is an LTE-Advanced feature that bonds together bands of spectrum to create wider channels and produce more capacity and faster speeds on capable devices. Essentially it creates a wider lane that allows more data traffic to travel at higher rates.
Sprint offers 22 devices that actively support two-channel carrier aggregation on its super-fast LTE Plus network. Two-channel carrier aggregation delivers peak speeds of more than 100 Mbps in 237 LTE Plus markets across the country using 40 MHz of spectrum on the company’s 2.5GHz cell sites.
Six devices currently offered by Sprint are three-channel carrier aggregation capable: the HTC 9, HTC 10, LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, and Samsung Note 7.
With three-channel carrier aggregation Sprint will utilize 60 MHz of spectrum to provide peak speeds of more than 200 Mbps on capable devices. Three-channel carrier aggregation is slated for enablement on capable devices via an automatic software update following network deployment, the company stated.
“Our holdings of more than 160 MHz of 2.5 GHz spectrum in the top 100 U.S. markets give us more capacity than any other carrier in the U.S. In combination with our Densification and Optimization strategy we future-proof our network for our customers,” said Günther Ottendorfer, Sprint COO, Technology.
“This capacity enables us to reach very high speeds, as well as provide innovative unlimited data plans to our customers while keeping pace with the growing demand for data,” Ottendorfer added.
Rajani Baburajan
