• 225 Mbit/s with LTE Carrier Aggregation
  • Calls with Voice over LTE (VoLTE) available
  • VoLTE Handover in 2G and 3G in the near future

MUNICH. Starting this week, Germany's fastest LTE radio cell is on air at the Telefónica building at Georg-Brauchle-Ring in Munich. Speeds up to a data transmission rate of 225 Mbit/s are achieved. Furthermore, the new VoLTE technology for LTE-voice calls can be used within the O2 live network. Even complex handovers in which calls are passed from LTE to 2G or 3G networks without interruption will be working in the live network during the next weeks.

For its fast radio cell, Telefónica uses a new technology that also serves as a basis for the coming LTE standard: LTE Carrier Aggregation will be one of the main components of LTE Advanced. For this, the device connects to O2 radio cells simultaneously sending at two different carrier frequencies.

Telefónica achieves its enormous transmission rates because the base stations in question provide up to 150 Mbit/s in the 2.6-GHz band and up to 75 Mbit/s at 800 MHz. By combining these data streams, download speeds of up to 225 Mbit/s are reached.

For this, Telefónica is using new category 6 (Cat 6) LTE devices. These are not, at the moment, commercially-available smartphones or USB sticks but rather prototypes from Huawei the size of a pocketbook. The manufacturer plans to present the first commercial Cat-6-devices already in the first half of next year. Furthermore, Huawei has supplied the network technology achieving the 225 Mbit/s speeds.

"Telefonica in Germany is again taking a leading position in the latest mobile radio technology," says Martin Škop, Managing Director Network Technology at Telefónica in Germany. "With O2 LTE we already today reach data rates of up to 50 Mbit/s and offer a mobile user experience, which so far was only possible at home with WiFi. With LTE the same services can be used with your smartphone as up until now have been available on a PC or a tablet at home. These services include, for instance, video streams, online games, or fast downloads with minimal ping times. In future this is even going to work nearly five times faster with Carrier Aggregation. By doing this we are preparing the LTE network for the requirements of the future."

In February, Telefónica in Germany had already achieved a breakthrough: The network operator was the first in the world to demonstrate a technology transferring telephone calls from the LTE network to the UMTS or GSM mobile network without interruption under real-world conditions, using components from different suppliers (multi-vendor environment). Since then, this so-called "hand over" out of mobile Voice over LTE (VoLTE) was possible in the lab under the realistic conditions found in an existing mobile phone network.

From today on, phone calls over VoLTE are available at several base stations in the same live wireless network used by O2 customers. It is expected that in December the technically difficult handover to 2G and 3G will also be working. It is only necessary to have a suitable VoLTE device and to be activated as a user. In the coming weeks, staff from the network department will be testing the new technology under real-world conditions.
Photos The fastest LTE radio cell (right antenna) in Germany and mobile VoLTE in live network on the roof of the Telefónica Deutschland headquarter in Munich
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The fastest LTE radio cell in Germany shows enormous transmission rates: Download speeds of up to 225 Mbit/s are reached (LTE Carrier Aggregation)
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LTE radio cell (right antenna) on the roof of the Telefónica Deutschland headquarter in Munich
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To find more photos, please visit the O2 channel on Flickr:
LTE cell in Munich, headquarter Telefónica Deutschland
Further photos showing network technology
Telefónica Deutschland Holding AG, listed at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the Prime Standard, and its wholly-owned, operationally active subsidiary Telefónica Germany GmbH & Co. OHG belong to Telefónica Europe and are part of the Spanish telecommunication group Telefónica S.A. The company offers its German private and business customers post-paid and prepaid mobile telecom products as well as innovative mobile data services based on the GPRS, UMTS and LTE technologies with its product brand O2. In addition, the integrated communications provider also offers DSL fixed network telephony and high-speed Internet. Telefónica Europe has 102 million mobile and fixed network customers in Spain, Great Britain, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany.
Further information: Press Office
Telefónica Deutschland
Markus-Oliver Göbel, Press Spokesman
Georg-Brauchle-Ring 23-25
80992 Munich

www.telefonica.de/presse
blog.telefonica.de
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