EE, Qualcomm, and Sony have demonstrated live gigabit 4G in London, a first for the city. The companies showed off a Sony Xperia XZ Premium connected to a laptop running Ookla’s speedtest app and achieving a download speed of 765Mbits/sec over the network at Wembley Stadium. The upload speed was reportedly a much meeker 110Mbits/sec.
The hardware, to achieve these lightning fast speeds, is quite limited for the time being. To reach those speeds you need to have a device with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset and the Qualcomm X16 modem, or a Samsung S8/S8 Plus with Exynos 8895. In addition to all of that hardware, the phone needs to have a 4x4 MIMO antenna array.
In the future, it is most likely that gigabit 4G will be rolled out to more populous areas; Tom Bennett, director of network services and devices at EE, said:
“Wherever we have a dense population we will increase the spectral capacity to be able to meet demand.”
Currently, the superfast gigabit 4G is only available at Wembley stadium, Cardiff Millennium Stadium, and at London Tech City. If EE are planning to go after dense populations we will see the technology roll out to other cities such as London, Birmingham, and Manchester in the future.
Source: Alphr | Image via Shutterstock