Gigabit LTE: Global Status – December 2019

Gigabit LTE Global Status – December update.

• GSA has identified 110 operators in 66 countries or territories investing in all the three core LTE-Advanced features for Gigabit LTE (defined as Carrier Aggregation, 4×4 MIMO or higher, and 256QAM modulation in the downlink).
• 62 operators are known to have deployed all three of these technologies and / or launched commercial services based on them.
• 321 operators in 136 countries are investing in at least one of the key technologies.
• Gigabit LTE does not always equal Gigabit speed. Some networks capable of delivering 1 Gbps downstream do so without using all three key LTE-Advanced features; some networks using all three features do not achieve 1 Gbps.

The fastest commercial LTE networks* in the GSA database are:

• Megafon: 1.6 Gbps; KDDI, SK Telecom, Swisscom, Telus, Turkcell:  1.2 Gbps; KT: 1.167 Gbps (achieved using MPTCP to combine LTE with 3CA and WiFi); China Unicom:  1.156 Gbps; Bell Mobility:  1.15 Gbps; 3 Hong Kong, Singtel:  1.1 Gbps

* in terms of declared maximum peak theoretical DL throughput

©2019 GSA