Oz MobileNet

Bucking the long term trend where networks are upgraded and then customers and operators wait impatiently for devices to use the new capability Samsung have announced a Galaxy S4 which will work on LTE Advanced networks. The device is projected for launch later this year.

LTE Advanced utilising LTE Release 10 is on very few of the circa 170 LTE networks in the world today (145 networks January 2012 and estimated by GSA 234 by December 2013). SK Telecom in Korea has launched LTE-A with the Samsung phone and 13 operators, Telstra among them, have either announced or plan to implement LTE-A in 2013.

LTE Advanced improves on standard LTE (3GPP Release 8 and Release 9) by allowing channel aggregation up to 100 MHz – should an operator be fortunate enough to own that much spectrum. Otherwise it increases MIMO layers up to 8 and provides support for HetNets which will provide exciting capacity and performance improvements to networks in the future using integrated Picocells. There is a good summary presentation on LTE by Qualcomm, the maker of the chip at the heart of the newly announced turbo Galaxy S4, here.

Most LTE devices today are Category 3 100/50 Mbps in 20 MHz spectrum. Telstra in February said that they are aiming to launch a Category 4 phone and a dongle later this year. Category 4 is 150/50 Mbps while the LTE Advanced Category 6 is 300/50 Mbps. Samsung say it will be twice the speed of the fastest existing LTE devices in real world speed.

3GPP Release Timing Chart by Qualcomm