Ericsson, Qualcomm and Russian mobile network operator MTS have conducted a successful live trial with a commercial small cell product of Rel-13 Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in Russia. LAA leverages the 5GHz unlicensed spectrum band together with licensed spectrum to deliver enhanced performance for mobile device users

The demonstration was conducted in an MTS test lab over a live network and used Ericsson’s Pico RBS 6402 small cell and a Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE mobile test device. With LAA, data speeds are boosted using unlicensed spectrum together with licensed spectrum. Ericsson’s RBS 6402 is a indoor Pico Cell offering three standards (LTE, WCDMA and Wi-Fi), 10 frequency bands and up to 300 Mbps LTE carrier aggregation. 

The amount of licensed spectrum is limited, and the need for spectrum is huge. The latest Ericsson Mobility Report forecasts that smartphones will be using 11 Gigabytes of data a month by 2022. This puts enormous strain on operators to meet the demands for performance in mobile connectivity for their subscribers.