The latest ‘State of Mobile Networks’ in the UK report from OpenSignal has been released providing a look at how the industry has progressed over the past year.

OpenSignal’s last report was released six months ago and highlighted one operator, EE, had crossed 70 percent LTE availability. In today’s report, EE has been joined by O2 and Vodafone who were also able to deliver LTE connectivity in more than 7 of every 10 tests. This leaves Three UK as the only major...

UK mobile operator EE has announced plans to convert some of its existing 2G airwaves into 4G to further improve the network’s speed and reliability.

More than 600 sites across cities including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cardiff, will be upgraded over the next six months. The move is in preparation for devices with CAT-12 and CAT-16 modems to hit the market.

EE’s mobile sites are equipped with 20MHz of 1800MHz spectrum, and 35MHz of 2.6GHz spectrum....

South Korean wireless telecommunications operator SK Telecom has worked with Finnish multinational company Nokia to dramatically reduce the latency between the handset and base station from 25 milliseconds (ms) to 2ms over its LTE network – thus moving one step closer to realising 5G.

The newly developed 2ms latency technology is expected to facilitate the development of diverse real-time services such as autonomous driving, artificial reality and virtual reality services. The low latency communication...

Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm have announced a new record on its Gigabit LTE testing, with speeds of 1.07 Gbps being recorded in its latest lab trials.

The speeds were achieved through using 12 simultaneous LTE streams – enabling up to a 20% increase in peak data rates in capacity, as well as greater speed – through Ericsson’s radio system and TLE software, and a mobile test device based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X20 LTE modem.

As per the specifications for Gigabit LTE, the testing...

Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) has become the latest operator to tout its wares for the rising gigabit LTE connectivity by achieving a download speed of ‘up to 1Gbps’ on its 4.5G live mobile network.

TIM described the test as ‘another first that confirms the technological leadership which is speeding towards 5G offering top performances and extraordinary quality for the mobile data service.’

The company added that the service will become commercially available from September in Milan and...

A couple of updates – and firsts – have taken place in the NB-IoT (NarrowBand IoT) and VoLTE (voice over LTE) spaces.

Deutsche Telekom has introduced two entry packages as pilot NB-IoT solutions in Germany, in a move to widen the scope of its network offerings in the arena and accelerate its 2020 5G communications standard.

The packages are NB-IoT Access, a streamlined NB-IoT device connectivity package, and NB-IoT Access & Cloud of Things, which is a more comprehensive product offering.

Both...

SK Telecom has announced that it has successfully commercialised five-band Carrier Aggregation (CA) and 4X4 MIMO, which are key technologies of LTE-A Pro, the last stage of LTE evolution. It aims to enhance its data transmission speed and performance to represent an early application of 5G technologies that support Gbps-level data speeds and massive network capacity.

SK Telecom’s five-band CA LTE-A Pro service supports up to 700Mbps data rates, enabling users to download 2GB within 23 seconds. This...

Hutchison-owned mobile operator Three is hoping to entice UK consumers stuck on slow ADSL connections to make the switch to 4G mobile broadband.

4G speeds are often faster than old connections using home telephone lines which some consumers are still forced to use. Some of these locations are now covered by a 4G signal, and Three is hoping to attract business from these underserved communities with a new plan.

Larger households may find the limit too restrictive.

The...

Public safety 4G/5G LTE technology will reach the mainstream markets after 2020 as trials and deployments gain momentum across the world, according to the latest global market study by ABI Research. Hardware revenue is expected to grow by 30 percent annually, reaching $540 million in 2025.

The United States, UK, and South Korea markets will host the world’s first three operational public safety LTE wireless networks by the end of 2017 or early 2018. Many countries will likely follow, either through a...

A network sharing deal between China Unicom and China Telecom in 2016 has been a contributing factor in the country’s LTE capex decline by 16% year on year, according to the latest note from IHS Markit.

Insights from IHS Markit’s “2017 Mobile Infrastructure: China Annual Market Tracker” show that China – being the world’s largest mobile subscriber base – had a total of 1.3 billion subscribers in 2016. Among these subscribers, 64% were on China...