America is not the only country scrambling to squeeze more use out of existing spectrum, with governments in Russia and Hong Kong opening up more bands and increasingly relying on technologies like Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) to accommodate data-hungry consumers, per RCR Wireless.
In Hong Kong, the Communications Authority (CA) is opening 580 MHz in the 5 GHz band, which is normally used for wi-fi, for mobile network operators. It’s a decision that will “enable Hong Kong to become one of the first few economies in the world to adopt advanced mobile technologies, such as LAA,” according to the CA.
The governing body originally opened up the matter to public consultation in February, and feedback from stakeholders such as Ericsson and Facebook. While some concerns about the maturity of LAA were raised and there was some quibbling over fees, feedback was positive enough overall to move ahead.
And in Russia, local operator MTS has been deploying LAA and using 256 QAM, carrier aggregation and 4×4 MIMO.
These trends mirror those in the United States, where AT&T has been rolling out LTE-LAA and T-Mobile and Ericsson broke the 1 Gbps barrier in December using 12-layer LAA, 256 QAM, 4×4 MIMO and carrier aggregation.
