Nokia Siemens Networks consistently pushes the boundaries of what’s possible with wireless networks, but sometimes they do something just to show that it can be done. At the PT Expo Comm in Beijing, NSN fused 8 separate 42 Mbps HSPA+ carriers into one that’s capable of pumping out a theoretical total of 336 Mbps worth of bandwidth. Now let’s break down that jargon. Many operators have either deployed or are thinking of deploying 42 Mbps HSPA+, the most notable is T-Mobile USA. The way that they’re doing it is by fusing together a pair of 21 Mbps HSPA+ carriers. Think of a carrier as a straw. Drink a gin and tonic with 2 straws and you’ll get drunk twice as fast. NSN used single carrier 42 Mbps HSPA+ in their demo, which no operator on the face of the planet currently uses, despite it being a part of 3GPP release 8. Then NSN paired 8 of these ultra fat straws together to deliver the kinds of speeds that make for fantastic headlines. Will we ever see this stuff hit the real world? Doubtful.
At this point you’re probably thinking that the “combine straws to get alcohol to your brain faster” idea is brilliant, and you’re right, it is, which is why it’s what going to make LTE-Advanced kick a metric ton of ass. LTE-Advanced allows operators to combine up to 5 20 MHz wide channels together to deliver as much as 1 gigabit per second speeds. Earlier this year, Ericsson drove around some little town in Sweden in a van to test an LTE-Advanced network that fused 3 20 MHz channels together. The result? 954 Mbps down. When will we be able to use such networks? Dish Network has 40 MHz of spectrum they want to use for LTE-Advanced at some point in 2014. That’s not very far off.
Back to NSN: Fantastic demo, but really … you’re just showing off.