Telecom network and software giant Nokia today said Ooredoo Qatar has demonstrated 4.5G Pro technology achieving 1 Gbps speed.
Demonstration at the Ooredoo headquarters in Doha used 5G-ready Nokia AirScale radio platform.
The demonstration will pave way for Ooredoo to introduce 1 Gbps speeds for broadband customers with Cat 16 capable devices in Qatar using the Ooredoo Supernet in early 2017. Ooredoo Qatar’s broadband network already supports close to 500 Mbps with three-carrier aggregation and 256 QAM for Cat 11 user devices at present. The investment in Nokia AirScale radio will enable Ooredoo Qatar to offer Internet speed of 1Gbps.
The 4.5G Pro technology using Nokia’s three-carrier aggregation technique, 256 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) and 4×4 Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) with Nokia’s 5G-ready AirScale radio platform enabled Ooredoo to maximize user data rates and network capacity on its existing base station sites and spectrum allocations.
“Our partner Nokia is supporting Ooredoo with its solutions to enable higher speeds and superior performance on our 3G, 4G and 4.5G Pro networks. The current joint achievement is a milestone, and puts us on the evolutionary path toward launching 5G networks in the future,” said Waleed Al Sayed, chief executive officer, Ooredoo Qatar.
“This year Ooredoo Qatar and Nokia already commercially launched Cat 11 with speeds close to 500 Mbps, and through this current demonstration, we are preparing the network to launch up to 1 Gbps speed,” said Bernard Najm, head of the Middle East Market Unit at Nokia.
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