Authorised by French regulator ARCEP, the trial was carried out between October and November 2014, and tested data speeds, coverage and FDD carrier aggregation using Ericsson’s pre-commercial equipment.
“This live FDD trial demonstrated that the 3.5GHz band can be successfully used in urban and suburban environments in stand-alone mode or in aggregation with another band to provide advanced mobile broadband services using a FDD access scheme for high-peak data rate applications to enhance user experience,” said Alain Maloberti, SVP at Orange Labs Networks.
Phase one of the trial was carried out at the Orange Labs in Paris, where speeds of 300Mbps were achieved by using the 3.5GHz band in aggregation with the 2.6GHz.
The second phase was conducted on Orange’s live mobile network and was based on Ericsson’s FDD 3.5GHz radio base station equipment.
For the trial, antennas supporting the 3.5GHz band were installed at the Le Ponant and Meriadeck sites in Bordeaux, France, and a range of streaming-based services were tested, allowing the team to continuously monitor network performance.
“This live FDD trial also demonstrated that the macro coverage of 3.5GHz spectrum is suitable for providing substantial capacity gains that can satisfy future consumer needs,” said Thomas Noren, VP and head of radio product management at Ericsson.
In October this year, SingTel, Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson completed a successful demonstration of FDD/TDD carrier aggregation using commercial hardware and software.
