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T-Mobile has just announced two big 5G milestones. Firstly, it achieved a US-first uplink carrier aggregation on a live commercial 5G standalone network. Next, it leveraged the technology to record the industry’s fastest-ever uplink speed of over 200Mbps using the sub-6GHz spectrum. More precisely, it hit a peak uplink speed of 207Mbps on a sub-6GHz 5G network.
T-Mobile worked with Nokia and Qualcomm to achieve these milestones. It used a test smartphone powered by the latter’s Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF System, while the Finnish brand likely supplied the networking equipment. The company says it initially run this test in the lab before giving it a go on a commercial network. It achieved similar uplink speeds in both scenarios.
Carrier aggregation improves the speed and performance of cellular networks by combining multiple channels or carriers. According to a press release from T-Mobile, this test involved a merger of two 5G channels of the mid-band spectrum — 2.5GHz Ultra Capacity 5G and 1900MHz. The result was a record-breaking sub-6GHz 5G uplink speed of 207Mbps.
“That’s like taking two separate highways and turning them into a superhighway where traffic can zoom faster than before. Customers with compatible devices will begin taking advantage of uplink 5G carrier aggregation early next year when T-Mobile begins rolling it out,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, President of Technology at T-Mobile. “Increased uplink speeds allow greater amounts of data to be transmitted from customer devices at a quicker rate, enhancing applications like video live streaming, calling, gaming, and Extended Reality (XR),” the company added.
T-Mobile sets 5G uplink speed record on a sub-6GHz spectrum
This record-setting uplink speed and the first-ever uplink carrier aggregation on a live commercial 5G standalone (SA) network in the US are just two of many 5G milestones T-Mobile has hit over the years. In 2020, the self-proclaimed Un-carrier launched the world’s first nationwide 5G SA network. It remains the only carrier to have a nationwide 5G SA network in the US to date. In the meantime, it has announced several 5G advancements that improve the customer experience, such as VoNR.
According to the company, it is the “largest, fastest, and most awarded 5G network” in the US. It covers 326 million people across two million square miles across that nation, which is “more than AT&T and Verizon combined”. Almost 85 percent (275 million people) of them are covered by its super-fast Ultra Capacity 5G. The company plans to expand its Ultra Capacity coverage to over 300 million people by the end of this year.