On the heels of Verizon’s news last week about advancing both the deployment of 5G and innovations in the technology, Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. have teamed up to continue driving development forward by being the first in the world to demonstrate 5G peak speeds of 5.06 Gbps. Using 5G mmWave spectrum with carrier aggregation, a technology that combines multiple channels of spectrum to provide greater efficiency for data sessions transmitting over the wireless network, the companies combined eight separate channels of spectrum to achieve the multi-gigabit speeds.

“We have been driving the evolution of 5G technology from the early days and we continue to aggressively drive innovation -- pushing the limits of the technology farther and faster for our customers,” said Brian Mecum, vice president, device technology, Verizon. “This latest achievement is yet another milestone in providing a genuinely differentiated service for our customers on mmWave.”

When fully mature, 5G technology has the potential of reaching speeds up to 10 Gbps, latency under 5 milliseconds, and service deployment times of 90 minutes. It will enable mobile connections to happen at up to 500 km/h with the ability to manage over a million devices per km2 and data volumes of 10 Tb/s/km2.  Verizon and its collaborators are driving hard to maximize the potential of this developing technology.

“Our strategy from the beginning has always been to reshape the world by driving innovation and leading the way in deploying the keenly differentiated 5G Ultra Wideband experience customers can only get from the mmWave based 5G network. It is the 21st century infrastructure that will shape the future,” said Mecum. “Today’s demonstration shows the advancements we are making to provide our customers with the mobile technology and capabilities they don’t even yet know they need.”

About the Trial

The demonstration, completed in a lab environment, used 5G infrastructure equipment from the Ericsson Radio System portfolio and a 5G smartphone form factor test device powered by a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X60 5G Modem-RF System featuring 3rd-generation Qualcomm® QTM535 mmWave antenna modules.  

The 5.06 Gbps speed was delivered using 800 MHz bandwidth in 28 GHz mmWave spectrum combined with 40 MHz for the 4G LTE anchor. This band combination is commercially supported in the Ericsson Radio System portfolio and several 5G devices available today powered by the Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System.

“We are excited to partner with Verizon and Qualcomm as we push the envelope and break another data speed record, achieving the 5Gbps data speeds. This is the highest speed ever achieved to a single device,” said Hannes Ekström, head of product line 5G, business area networks, Ericsson. “This shows the fruits of our collaboration and our investments into technology leadership to enable harnessing the millimeter wave spectrum. The technology to aggregate vast amounts of spectrum in these bands is enabling a new world of opportunities.”

“With years of research and development in defining the next generation wireless connectivity, Qualcomm Technologies’ collaboration with industry leaders Ericsson and Verizon in advancing 5G mmWave marks a significant milestone in making 5G a commercial reality,” said Joe Glynn, vice president, business development, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “5G mmWave will enable many new use cases for consumers and businesses as well as enable many of today’s mobile devices to take advantage of  its enhanced network capacity, multi-gigabit speeds and low latency.”