TeliaSonera’s Norwegian subsidiary Netcom has demonstrated what it says is the first time LTE has topped 1 Gbps.

The event in Oslo was attended by Noway’s Minister of Transport and Communication Ketil Solvik-Olsen and was apparently designed as much to cement Norway’s position as a telecoms pioneer as anything else. Netcom also claimed the first live LTE connection and the first commercial LTE network back in 2009.

As was the case six years ago, the principal kit partner was Huawei. It is claiming this is the first LTE Advanced Pro network, which it’s also calling 4.5G. Implicit in that name is the inevitable ‘pre-5G’ inference. Huawei expects the commercial deployment of 4.5G among operators will start from 2016.

“This is an important step towards 5G, which lies a few years ahead,” said Jon Christian Hillestad, CTO of TeliaSonera Norway. “We do not know exactly which speeds the future will require, but we know that the digitization era, where the Internet of Things will continuously grow, will demand much higher speeds. The future will require bandwidth, high speed and no delay in transfers. We are preparing for that reality with the LTE Advanced Pro.”

“What we witnessed today is only the beginning of the 4.5G era of wireless communications, where 1Gbps will be the new mobile broadband network rate benchmark,” said Yang Chaobin, CMO of Huawei Wireless Product Line.

“The speeds we have seen today proves that Norway is at the very front of the technological development,” said Solvik-Olsen. “It is important for us as a nation to have high ambitions in the electronic communications field.”

Just as happened with 3G we can expect to see increments of 4G progressing as operators and vendors race to be the first to be able to use 5G in their marketing. We’re already at 4.5G and it wouldn’t be surprising to be hearing about the first 4.75G or even 4.9G before 2016 is over.