First commercial LAA deployment in Ufa City of Russia

MTS, the leading communications service provider in Russia and the CIS deploys first commercial LAA technology in Ufa City, Russia, delivering Gigabit LTE peak download speeds.

Ericsson and MTS, the leading communications service provider in Russia and the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), together with Qualcomm Technologies have jointly deployed Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in Ufa City, Russia.

Delivering Gigabit LTE speeds, this is the first commercial LAA rollout in the region and is part of the agreement entered by MTS and Ericsson in 2017 to upgrade the MTS network with Ericsson Radio System and core network solutions and prepare for 5G and IoT.

LAA is an important technology in the LTE network evolution to 5G, providing access to new unlicensed frequencies. With this milestone, MTS has surpassed its previous 700Mbps speed record, enabling the service provider to take the next step in turning its mobile infrastructure into gigabit-capable.

Andrey Ushatsky, Vice President, Technology and IT, MTS, said, “LAA will allow us to build gigabit LTE networks quickly and cost-effectively in places with active traffic consumption, where operators do not always have enough available frequencies in the licensed spectrum.”

Yulia Klebanova, Vice President of Business Development, Qualcomm Europe said, “Gigabit LTE can help operators increase network throughput and achieve higher spectral efficiency, providing incredible network speeds to users of mobile devices powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE modems with LAA support, including Snapdragon 835 and 845 Mobile Platforms.”

Sebastian Tolstoy, Head of Ericsson Russia said, “LAA gives service providers access to new spectrum, increasing network capacity and supporting both higher peak rates and higher-than-average speed rates. This commercial LAA rollout marks another important milestone in our strategic cooperation with MTS. Earlier we achieved peak throughput data rates of 25 Gbps at our joint 5G trial. The next step is to prepare for a new demonstration of enhanced 5G capabilities during the football tournament in Russia this year.”