Nokia just broke the world's 5G download speed record in Dallas

Video Thumbnail Verizon's mmWave 5G network may be the fastest commercially available 5G coverage in the US due to its exclusive high-bands utilization, but even at preset scenarios its speeds can't match what Nokia just achieved with its 5G equipment down in Dallas, Texas.

Say you take out and fire up a download speed test on your Galaxy S20 Ultra around Bridgewater, New Jersey? The results? Well, bordering on 1.8Gbps, as you can see in Verizon's snapshot below. How much faster can you go?

Verizon 5G speeds on theGalaxy S20 Ultra

Nokia sets a 5G download speed record

When the cat is not around, the mice start dancing, and by cat we mean Huawei's 5G equipment, and by mice we mean Nokia or Ericsson's 5G base stations. 

While Huawei holds the lion's share of the world's 5G patents, and offers unbeatable 5G carrier equipment for the money, it walked right into a geopolitical buzzsaw last year, and as a result the carriers limited options are now mostly Nokia or Ericsson equipment.

They shouldn't fret, though, as the government may foot the bill for the price difference between Huawei's and the more expensive 5G network equipment, while Nokia just clocked the whopping 4.7 Gbps down there in Dallas. That's the world’s fastest 5G speed on an over-the-air network, utilizing 800 MHz of commercial millimeter wave 5G spectrum. How did Nokia do it?

The record speed was achieved by combining eight 100 MHz channels of millimeter wave spectrum on the 28 GHz and 39GHz bands, providing 800 MHz of bandwidth, and 40 MHz of LTE spectrum using the EN-DC functionality available on Nokia’s AirScale solution. 

EN-DC allows devices to connect simultaneously to 5G and LTE networks, transmitting and receiving data across both air-interface technologies. This means devices can achieve a higher throughput than when connecting to 5G or LTE alone. The speeds were achieved on both 5G cloud-based (vRAN) and classic baseband configurations.

Nokia’s AirScale Radio Access is an industry-leading, commercial end-to-end 5G solution enabling operators globally to capitalize on their 5G spectrum assets. It offers huge capacity scaling and market-leading latency and connectivity by enabling all air-interface technologies on the same radio access equipment.

All that technical jargon means one thing - 5G will be delivering on its promises, and those blazing speeds and low latency we were primed to expect, may become a reality sooner than expected.

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.

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