DT and Ericsson hit 40 Gbps over millimeter wave

Operator group Deutsche Telekom and kit vendor Ericsson got together in Athens to claim a new record for wireless backhaul.

Right now you’re apparently looking at a maximum throughput of 10 Gbps (gigabits per second) from your wireless backhaul. At a DT service centre in Athens the two companies teamed up to quadruple that threshold using millimeter wave over a distance of 1.4 kilometers. The aim of the demo was to prove the commercial viability of future wireless backhaul technology.

“A high-performance transport connection will be key to support high data throughput and enhanced customer experience in next-generation networks,” said Alex Jinsung Choi, SVP Strategy & Technology Innovation at DT. “While fiber is an important part of our portfolio, it is not the only option for backhaul. Together with our partners, we have demonstrated fiber-like performance is also possible with wireless backhauling/X-Haul solutions. This offers an important extension of our portfolio of high-capacity, high-performance transport options for the 5G era.”

“Microwave continues to be a key technology for mobile transport by supporting the capacity and latency requirements of 4G and future 5G networks. Our joint innovation project shows that higher capacity microwave backhaul will be an important enabler of high-quality mobile broadband services when 5G becomes a commercial reality.”

In the light of AT&T’s absurd rebranding of LTE-A as 5Ge it’s good to see some concrete, substantial 5G progress being demonstrated. 5G will require a lot more base stations and small cells to work, which means a lot more backhaul. So we’re likely to see a lot more of this sort of thing in the coming months and years.