Nokia, Elisa, Qualcomm claim 5G speed record

Nokia, Elisa and Qualcomm Technologies have announced that they have achieved what they say are the world’s fastest 5G speeds on a commercial network by delivering 8 Gbps for the first time serving two 5G mmWave devices connected simultaneously.

The companies say this speed, which was showcased at Elisa’s flagship store in Helsinki, Finland, will support a range of low-latency, high-bandwidth services, such as high-speed video downloads, mission-critical or virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications.

The service is expected to be implemented in 2021.

The milestone was achieved by using Nokia’s 5G mmWave technology and Qualcomm Technologies’ 5G smartphone form factor test devices over Elisa’s commercial 5G network.

In addition to video, VR and AR, the high speeds will enable more high-bandwidth and latency-sensitive enterprise services, such as remotely controlled devices for industrial needs or mission-critical applications.

The base station used two Nokia AirScale radios, each using 800 MHz of commercial millimetre wave 5G spectrum at 26 GHz.

These provided connectivity to two 5G smartphone form factor test devices powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G modem-RF system featuring second-generation Qualcomm QTM525 mmWave antenna modules, with each device reaching 4 Gbps peak speeds from the base station.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Farhad