MTS announces, that it will launch the first fragment of 4G that is an aggregation of spectrum in LTE FDD and LTE TDD standards in Moscow before September 2016 and later in other Russian regions. The aggregation of the two standards will enhance LTE coverage and increase speeds up to 187 Mb/s.
During the testing phase, MTS successfully aggregated the first fragment of its LTE commercial network by combining two carrier frequencies: 10 MHz spectrum bandwidth at the FDD 1800 MHz standard and a 20 MHz bandwidth at the TDD 2600 MHz standard. This resulted in increased internet speeds of up to 165 Mb/s outdoors, 85 Mb/s indoors, while the maximum limit was 187 Mb/s. At the same time, the spectrum aggregation directly improved coverage of a LTE TDD base station by 60%, while enhancing the quality of TDD network coverage inside the buildings.
In another set of tests, MTS successfully aggregated three LTE FDD carrier frequencies at the 800 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,600 MHz ranges with corresponding spectrum widths of 5 MHz, 10 MHz and 10 MHz. As a result, internet speeds exceeded 163 Mb/s, which is a strong result considering that on a standalone basis the speed would not exceed 112 Mb/s.
Both types of aggregation can work simultaneously, while the system determines automatically the optimal regime depending on network conditions and mobile carrier capabilities.
In Moscow, MTS serves over half of its data traffic over LTE, and the share is steadily growing. The aggregation of FDD and TDD standards will almost double average mobile internet speeds and multiply the effective network coverage of TDD technology by 2.5x. This technique will put MTS customers in a privileged position all over Russia since MTS won a 2,595-2,620 MHz LTE TDD federal spectrum auction in February 2016, while MTS has already been serving Moscow and the Moscow region since 2012 on this LTE standard. Already since the beginning of 2016, the number of LTE-TDD enabled devices has increased by more than 20%.
Development of LTE by MTS
- In Spring 2015, MTS launched a new step towards developing LTE in Russian regions by betting on tech-neutral and multi-range LTE network. To this day, MTS launched tech-neutral LTE-1,800 spectrum in 35 regions and LTE-Advanced with two aggregated frequencies (1,800+2,600 MHz or LTE 800+2,600 MHz) in 25 regions.
- By the end of 2015, MTS was the first Russian telecom operator to launch LTE in all 83 regions where it operated.
- Since the beginning of 2016, MTS - in cooperation with Cisco – has been implementing a new solution called Cisco SON on its LTE network, which through an automated optimization process can improve internet speeds by 20% on average, enhance network access by 25% and decreases the amount of connection abruptions by 10%.
- Throughout 2015, MTS increased its Moscow LTE network by 50%, while quadrupling the number of indoor base stations.