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Hong Kong's CSL demos 300Mbps LTE Advanced service, due early 2014 (video)
It was only about four months ago when CSL, Telstra's part-owned operator behind Hong Kong's one2Free and 1010 networks, showed off its 150Mbps LTE Cat 4 upgrade; but why stop there? Today, the same company gave us a glimpse of its upcoming 300Mbps LTE Advanced service, which is enabled by aggregating its 20MHz carriers at both its 1,800MHz and 2,600MHz LTE bands. "The announcements in Korea and the announcements in Australia around LTE Advanced... the theoretical speed that they're delivering is 150Mbps. What we're talking about today is LTE-A300," said Phil Mottram, CEO of CSL. "It's definitely a first for Hong Kong, and it's potentially a world-first in terms of being able to deliver these theoretical, maximum download speeds at 300Mbps."
Hong Kong's CSL preps network for LTE Cat 4, offers Huawei's 150 Mbps mobile hotspot (video)
With Hong Kong boasting pretty much the fastest average internet speed on this planet, it's no surprise that the city is also one of the first to launch commercial 150 Mbps LTE Cat 4 service -- just right after SingTel's launch in Singapore earlier this month. Announced yesterday by CSL (who operates both one2free and the more premium 1010), its FD-LTE network takes advantage of the recently acquired 5MHz extended spectrum, in order to increase the capacity of 2600MHz from 2 x 15MHz to 2 x 20MHz. This upgrade is what enables Cat 4 download speed of up to 150Mbps on compatible devices, and it went live yesterday. The company's 1800MHz spectrum will also get an upgrade from 2 x 10MHz to 2 x 15MHz in June, followed by another jump to 2 x 20MHz towards the end of the year. You'll find a live demo video (courtesy of RingHK) showing the performance difference between Cat 3 and Cat 4 after the break, with CTO Christian Daigneault claiming he's seen a speed increase of up to twice as fast in the lab.
