In an exciting development for the telecommunication industry, Ericsson, in collaboration with Telstra and MediaTek, has achieved a remarkable milestone in 5G technology. The trio has successfully reached a peak downlink speed of 9.4 Gbps on Telstra’s live commercial 5G Standalone network. In a controlled lab environment, they exceeded 10 Gbps, showcasing the potential of the network.
Enhanced connectivity comes with several applications that could revolutionize our digital experiences. Such high speeds will facilitate smoother video streaming and online gaming, and enable rapid downloads in places with high user traffic, like stadiums and transportation hubs. Furthermore, these speeds are a stepping stone for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality, all of which demand high data throughput.
This significant achievement was conducted at Telstra’s Innovation Center on the Gold Coast. Ericsson’s advanced Radio System base station, using their 5G Advanced software, powered a live mobile site. MediaTek’s platform leveraged these enhanced capabilities. The setup utilized New Radio Dual Connectivity and NR Carrier Aggregation to integrate several frequency layers effectively.
On the technical front, the demonstration harnessed Ericsson’s RAN Processor 6672, alongside other vital hardware components like AIR 5322, AIR 3258 radios, and Radio 4466. This assembly aggregated the spectrum across multiple bands and was connected to Ericsson’s Dual Mode Core via the low-latency Router 6675. MediaTek’s chipset enabled the mobile device to run at these impressive speeds.
Previously, in September 2024, Telstra was the first to deploy Ericsson’s 4th-generation Radio Access Network platform in Australia. This move prepared the way for Australia’s 5G Advanced platform. At that time, Telstra used Ericsson’s RAN Processor 6672 in a baseband pooling configuration, known as Centralized RAN. According to Ericsson, this setup delivered over three times the previous capacity and resulted in 60% lower energy consumption.
Notably, Telstra was the pioneering telco to test, validate, and run commercial traffic on this RAN Compute platform. The new platform is key for future network developments, supporting advanced automation and AI/ML capabilities, and offering up to 20 times more pre-loaded AI models than previous generations.