The Spanish operator used Nokia radio equipment and a test terminal equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 LTE modem on its own network to realise the speeds.
To reach the speeds, Telefónica used 4x4 MIMO (Multiple-input Multiple-output) and 256QAM technology on an LTE-A network, with dual-carrier aggregation. MIMO multiplies the number of data paths between a cell site and the phone, while 256QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) increases the number of bits delivered per transmission for even faster speeds.
Telefónica said it plans to upgrade its network in Spain using the new technology, gradually bringing faster speeds to mobile broadband customers. It also claimed LTE-A will surpass data transmission speeds of 1Gbps within the next few years.
The news comes just a month after Deutsche Telekom realised download speeds of 1.2Gbps in tests with Huawei using 4x4 MIMO technology carried out in Berlin.
