T-Mobile have achieved another network speed milestone.

T-Mobile and Nokia hit download speeds of 1.3Gbps this week using commercial Nokia tech with License Assisted Access (LAA). The testing was done at T-Mo’s lab in Bellevue, Wash.

The equipment used in the test included Nokia’s AirScale MicroRRH connected to an AirScale module system. To reach 1.3Gbps, T-Mo and Nokia used aggregated LTE carriers in licensed and unlicensed bands with five component carrier aggregation, 256 QAM, 4×4 MIMO, and LAA on 14 antenna layers.

Here’s what T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray had to say about this achievement:

“We are working to deploy small cells that support LAA and build on the LTE-Advanced features we’ve deployed across the country, laying a foundation for 5G. Our priority is ensuring customers have the best mobile experience, so we are accelerating LAA and five carrier aggregation to give them even higher speeds and greater network performance.”

Late last year, T-Mobile achieved speeds of 1.1Gbps using 12-layer LAA technology, and now T-Mo has managed to hit even faster speeds using LAA. Keep in mind that this is all done during lab testing, so you’re not going to go out and suddenly see 1Gbps+ speeds in the real world with your smartphone, but the tests do tease that network improvements are coming with the rollout of LAA small cells.

Source: T-Mobile