Swisscom introduces an LTE first

Swisscom is the first telecommunication company in Europe to expand its mobile network with a new technology mix. In doing so the two LTE standards, FDD and TDD will be combined. “This combination will provide our customers with greater capacity and higher speeds” says Heinz Herren, Swisscom CTO, explaining the benefits. The Swisscom Füssli shop in Zürich is currently equipped with it and from summer 2016 the 3 carrier LTE FDD/TDD will be available on networks in metropolitan areas.

“Swisscom innovates to provide our customers with the best network at all times, today and in the future. With this combination of the two LTE modes we are the first provider in Europe to offer a completely new combination of technologies. Thus our customers will benefit significantly from more capacity and higher data rates in our mobile network”, says Heinz Herren, CTO at Swisscom. Swisscom now combines the LTE standard currently in use, FDD (Frequency Division Duplex), with the LTE standard TDD (Time Division Duplex), by means of carrier aggregation using tri-band carrier aggregation, meaning that three frequency blocks are connected together. As a result a much larger number of customers can use a radio cell at the same time and with high speed. This means all mobile customers benefit from increased network capacity. The 3 carrier combination of the two LTE standards, FDD and TDD, offers a maximum speed of 335 Mbit/s. The development of this technology is however only just beginning and in the long term it offers great potential to continue to increase speeds enormously.

Close collaboration with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies

The new technology mix is possible thanks to the close partnership with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies. Ericsson provides the necessary software and hardware which is needed to aggregate the two LTE standards. Qualcomm Technologies develops the chipset for the early test and commercial devices, which support both FDD and TDD.

Available on the mobile network from summer 2016

LTE FDD/TDD will be used at heavily frequented locations from summer 2016 and will be available for all customers. From then the first smartphones which support the new technology will also be available. As a result of the extreme increase in data volumes that will be transferred via mobile networks, Swisscom is working intensively on the constant development and expansion of the network and investing hundreds of millions in this annually.