LTE-Advanced is a reality

Marking yet another first, du announced the successful introduction of the first LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) live network in the UAE, making it the very first telco with CAT-6 ready LTE network in the UAE. This reiterates the UAE's global standing as a frontrunner intelecomand marks an important step closer to 5G technology.
The launch of the LTE-A Carrier Aggregation capability would allow du to offer its customers unsurpassed mobile broadband speeds up to 225Mbps - therefore marking a clear enhancement of customers' user experience in terms of upload or download speeds or audio and video streaming. More importantly, the new capability targets the significant increase in the average user throughput in addition to the superior coverage. Significantly, this also paves the way for more leading smartphone manufacturers to commercially launch an expanded range of LTE-A CAT-6 handsets in the UAE.
Saleem Al Blooshi, Executive Vice President, Network Development and Operations, du, said: "We are proud of achieving this tremendous milestone. This is a result of our "smart investment" strategy that puts customers at the heart of our focus and we are very keen on introducing capabilities that can be utilised and experienced by our customers immediately, much beyond simply focusing on announcing higher speeds. Having said that, it is important to note that we have invested in such technology once we started to get confirmation from the major smartphone manufacturers that this capability (a.k.a. CAT-6 capable handsets) is readily available in many of these new smartphones already launched in the UAE. With our launch of LTE-A in the UAE, customers using any of these new CAT-6 smartphones will enjoy new unprecedented speeds when in an area covered using this new technology".
"We are excited that this important milestone also represents another step forward towards du's readiness to the Smart City vision by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai." du commercially launched LTE1800 on June 12, 2012. In August 2014 du announced VoLTE has been successfully installed and tested over its commercial LTE network and demonstrated VoLTE calls during GITEX 2014 and commercial launch is expected Q1/Q2 2015. du has successfully demonstrated LTE-A with 900Mbps over its LTE network in GITEX 2014 by combining three carriers with MIMO 4x4. du has also successfully tested LTE-Advanced with carrier aggregation over it is commercial network with 300Mbps peak throughput by combining band 20 (800 MHz) and band 3 (1800 MHz) in July 2014.
Source: WAM