Sprint says it has demonstrated wireless speeds of 2.6 Gbps on a single cellular sector. The information came to light in a blog post from Sprint CTO Stephen Bye.
Sprint previously demonstrated a speed of 1 Gbps using equipment from Samung, Bye noted. And another demo delivered speeds of 1.3 Gbps using equipment from Nokia Solutions and Networks with 60 MHz of spectrum using TDD-LTE, he said.
“Since that time we have continued to work in the lab with NSN to push… even further using TDD-LTE with LTE-Advanced techniques such as carrier aggregation and 8×8 MIMO,” wrote Bye. It is those techniques that yielded the 2.6 Gbps speeds, he said.
Bye hastened to add that 2.6 Gbps isn’t a real-world speed today. But he also noted that Sprint already delivers wireless peak speeds of 60 Mbps with the Sprint Spark service the company launched in October.
“Within our labs we work with many partners to push the limits of technology and create an open dialogue about where we want to go and how we’ll get there,” wrote Bye. “The work we’re doing with Sprint Spark has put us on a projected timeline to deliver real-world peak speeds of 60 Mbps today and potentially 180 Mbps by late next year.”
Sprint Spark initially was available in parts of five markets and has since been expanded.
The company is working hard to upgrade its network, which according to T-Mobile, currently lags behind competitors on speed tests.
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse recently acknowledged that the company is going through a painful rip-and-replace of its wireless network but noted that when the upgrade is completed Sprint will have a superior network.
Bye closed his blog post by asking entrepreneurs, innovators and developers of tomorrow to consider what they would do with a 2.6 Gbps mobile broadband network.
Sprint offered a hint of what can be achieved with high-speed mobile broadband in a video that the company released at the time it announced Sprint Spark. In that video, a remotely located nurse speaks to a patient about his vital signs, a video camera with facial recognition is used to allow a grocery delivery person into the home and watch him until he exits, and boy plays baseball with another boy in another country, hitting the image of a ball with a bat.
