Ooredoo launches 375Mbps LTE-A in Qatar

Ooredoo, the pan-Asia and Middle Eastern telco, has confirmed the commercial launch of its brand new LTE-A service in Qatar, capable of delivering download speeds of up to 375Mbps.

The service, launched in partnership with Nokia Networks, aggregates 50MHz of spectrum across the 800, 1800 and 2600MHz bands. To that effect, Nokia has helped Ooredoo utilise three band carrier aggregation with its Flex Multiradio 10 Base Station product suite.

It’s also provided the telco with a new evolved packet core to help deliver the fundamental LTE core network. The project forms part of Ooredoo’s ongoing Supernet project, which it claims is intended to provide all of its customers with superior network quality and mobile broadband speeds across 3G, 4G and 4G+ (LTE-A).

Speaking of the announcement, Nokia’s head of MEA, Bernard Najm, pointed to earlier trials conducted between the two in the CAT 11 band, before it commercially launched its LTE-A service in the CAT 9 band.

“We’re happy to support Ooredoo Qatar in its mission to provide top-quality services to its customers,” he said. “After we successfully demonstrated 600 Mbps CAT 11 speeds in October, we have now helped Ooredoo launch the three-band carrier aggregation technology to deliver higher data throughput with superior reliability.”

The LTE-A service is now commercially available to customers with compatible CAT 9 handsets across Doha.