In an industry first, the partners have reached speeds of 1 Gbps over a 6.5 km distance from the radio antenna.

TIM, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. are leaders once again with a new world record for ultrabroadband long distance speed with 5G technology applied to Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). A speed of 1 Gbps on 26 GHz millimetre-wave (mmWave) frequencies, at a distance of 6.5 kilometres from the site (1Gbps with UDP protocol, 700Mbps Speedtest Ookla TCP) has been reached on TIM’s live network.

This record confirms the usability of 5G millimetre-wave spectrum, not only for urban, high speed or high-density-only deployment, but also for wider 5G FWA coverage. It builds on the successes previously achieved with millimetre-wave in September when the TIM network connection stably exceeded a speed of 4 Gigabits per second in downlink on a live 5G network.

The milestone paves the way to provide TIM customers with enhanced ultrabroadband connections, especially in those areas not yet covered by optic fibre. It also ensures through these new 5G Fixed Wireless Access solutions, called Fiber To The Air, an increasingly widespread and efficient broadband coverage to the entire country.

The innovative solution, tested on a live network, was made possible thanks to the new Ericsson 5G mmWave high power antenna-integrated radio AIR 5322, installed at the mobile site on Via Oriolo Romano in Rome, equipped with Ericsson’s extended range software. To achieve this record, a new generation 5G device already on the market was used consisting of Casa Systems’ new AurusAI, the industry’s first high-power 5G mmWave customer premise equipment (CPE), and equipped with a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X55 5G Modem-RF System with Qualcomm® QTM527 extended-range mmWave antenna module.

This solution will also shortly be tested in the town of Front, in the Canavese area of the province of Turin. This is a white area not yet reached by connectivity solutions, where a 5G millimetre-wave site has been equipped with a high-capacity radio link connection, to allow selected users to try out the FWA 5G mmWave multi-gigabit speeds. Other industrial districts will subsequently be identified where business customers will be able to try the new technology.