Our 5G network has again broken speed records
Never before seen 5G speeds
Earlier in the year we were proud to share that we’d managed to beat an old mmWave 5G download speed record on a commercial network. We were blown away then by what this technology is capable of, and it keeps amazing us as we head into 2023.
Working with our friends at Qualcomm and Ericsson, we’ve set a new network download world record of 7.3Gbps on our commercial 5G network. The last record we broke was achieved with a speed of 5.9Gbps, and in less than a year we’ve improved that by more than 20%.
The speed was achieved at one of our live mmWave 5G sites located at the Gold Coast in Queensland, using a smartphone test device with Qualcomm’s next generation X70 5G Modem-RF System, which is expected to be seen in some flagship smartphones released next year.
The team used a lot of network capabilities to make it happen, including using carrier aggregation to stack up to 800MHz of mmWave (26GHz) and then combine with 100MHz of mid-band (3.6Ghz) spectrum.
This test result comes less than a week after our mobile network was awarded “Best in Test” by industry leader Umlaut – the second time in a row we’ve taken out the honours.
While peak speeds definitely excite us about the possibilities of 5G, the real day to day benefit is that the faster our 5G network can reach, the more capacity we have across the network for an even more reliable experience. And as time goes by the peak speeds of today will become the average speeds in the future as we continue to strive for better.
Our constantly evolving 5G network
These new speed capabilities also help enhance our recently launched 5G standalone network, which allows us to carve up our network into separate, secure slices.
These slices can be tailored to provide an assured network experience with minimum guaranteed up and down speeds, lower latency and faster responsiveness of applications, greater security and greater reliability. So, while one person may want high speed and low latency, and another may require the opposite, we can tailor the network to suit their needs.
The exciting part is, the faster our network’s speeds, the more capable slices we can offer and to more people.
As the number of 5G devices and the demand for high-speed, low-latency applications in dense urban environments increases, mmWave 5G will be able to scale to meet these expectations – with 5G standalone right in the middle of it.
5G already delivers coverage and speed improvements over 4G, and mmWave supercharges that for blazing fast connection speeds over shorter distances. 5G Standalone can leverage mmWave in the same way for compatible devices.
Just a few years ago we wouldn’t have believed we could hit 6Gbps, let alone over 7Gbps and it’s got us even more excited about what the future of 5G holds.