Samsung, Verizon and Qualcomm Touch New Upload Speeds on mmWave

Verizon, Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., continue to push the limits of 5G technology, using innovation to continuously drive greater performance from this transformational technology. Recently, the companies reached upload speeds of 711 Mbps in a lab trial using aggregated bands of mmWave spectrum.

“Our mmWave build is a critical differentiator, even as we drive towards massive and rapid expansion of our 5G service using our newly acquired mid-band spectrum, we are doubling down on our commitment to mmWave spectrum usage,” said Adam Koeppe, Senior Vice President of Technology Planning for Verizon. “You will see us continue to expand our mmWave footprint to deliver game-changing experiences for the densest parts of our network and for unique enterprise solutions. We had over 17K mmWave cell sites at the end of last year and are on track to add 14K more in 2021, with over 30K sites on air by the end of this year, and we’ll keep building after that,” said Koeppe.

Previous multi-gigabit speeds have been recorded on downloads before, but this is the fastest speed the companies have been able to reach while uploading data to the network. Speeds approaching those seen in this recent trial (for comparison, 700+ Mbps is the equivalent of a one GB movie uploaded in about 10 seconds) will pave the way for uploading videos, pictures and data to the cloud, social media accounts, or sharing directly with others in densely populated venues like downtown streets, concerts and football stadiums. Whether using a traditional mobile link or fixed wireless access, these speeds will also allow students working from home or employees in distributed workforces the ability to upload and synchronize massive files, complete simultaneous editing of documents in the cloud, and collaborate with colleagues effortlessly.

These breakthrough uplink speeds will also drive new private network use cases for enterprises. Faster uplink speeds can enable quality control solutions for manufacturers using artificial intelligence to identify tiny product defects in products visible only through ultra HD video feeds. Other upload-intensive solutions such as multi-location, massive security video capabilities and augmented reality-centered customer experiences will also get a boost with these increased speeds.

The demonstration surpassed current peak upload speeds by combining 400MHz of Verizon’s 5G mmWave frequency and 20MHz of 4G frequency using the latest 5G technologies, including mmWave carrier aggregation and Single-User MIMO (SU-MIMO).

Network technology used in the demo included Samsung’s 28GHz 5G Compact Macro and virtualized RAN (vRAN) and Core (vCore) along with a smartphone form-factor test device powered by the Qualcomm flagship Snapdragon® X65 5G Modem-RF System.