Ericsson and Qualcomm have demonstrated Release 9 Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB) from LTE TDD (TD-LTE) to GSM, live, using a standard Ericsson radio base station RBS 6000 and an LTE multimode chipset from Qualcomm. With this achievement, both LTE FDD and LTE TDD modes, using un-paired spectrum, could also make use of the broad GSM coverage.

Live, public demonstration at the PT Expo in Beijing was held with Ericsson LTE TDD network and Qualcomm chipset.

“The efficient support of voice and messaging services in LTE multimode smartphone platforms is instrumental in driving device economies of scale in key LTE TDD regions such as China. CSFB utilizes the same power-efficient, single radio chipset architecture from Qualcomm that has been widely proven for LTE FDD CSFB support,” said Serge Willenegger, Vice President Product Management at Qualcomm.

LTE is expanding rapidly as data traffic over mobile networks grows 15 times every year. Ericsson estimates that smartphone subscriptions will reach around 3 billion in 2017.