DALLAS � AT&T is the latest to say that it will start to deliver LTE-Advanced Pro (also known as 4.5G, or Gigabit LTE) in 2017, according tolight reading.�
And AT&T is only the latest carrier in the US to make that claim: T-Mobile US Inc. CTO Neville Ray says the operator would beat its rivals to the 4.5G feature, in partnership with Nokia, and Sprint CTO John Saw is expecting to “unveil some innovative work … pushing 1 Gbit/s class speed boundaries” in 2017.
LTE-Advanced Pro uses three- or four-carrier aggregation (use of multiple radio channels bonded together to increase mobile throughput capacity) and a 256-quadrature amplitude modulation scheme to achieve high data rates.
Outside of the lab the Gigabit LTE downloads are unlikely to be realized by end users. The carriers tend speak in terms of “peak theoretical speeds” when discussing Gigabit LTE. As networks evolve, and system upgrades occur over the next couple of years, a noticeable bump in LTE performance will be noted by users with compatible mobile phones, at least in the cities, according to the same article.�
