T-Mobile, working alongside partners Qualcomm, and Nokia, have passed the gigabit speed threshold using advanced 4G LTE technology in lab tests.

The Un-carrier announced it achieved download speeds of 1.175 Gbps using 12 independent streams of LTE data. The demonstration utilized 4×4 MIMO, 256-QAM technology, and three carrier aggregation across 60 MHz of downlink spectrum on T-Mobile’s network. The test was conducted using Nokia’s 4.9G network powered by the Nokia AirScale Base Station. Qualcomm provided a test device running on a Snapdragon X20 LTE modem.  

“Using the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem we are breaking through the gigabit barrier, further enhancing network capacity and real user data rates,” Cristiano Amon, EVP of Qualcomm Technologies and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, commented. “And working with Nokia and T-Mobile, using our second-generation gigabit LTE modem, we’ve now shown the steady strides we are making as we progress on the path to 5G. User devices supporting these speeds are expected to be made commercially available in the first half of 2018.”

The Un-carrier indicated the demos show that commercially available 4G technologies can provide customers with top speeds, well beyond those seen currently.

“We are helping customers maximize the value of their existing networks by bringing performance closer to that expected from 5G in the future,” Marc Rouanne, president of mobile networks at Nokia, noted. “With this key test, using T-Mobile’s network and Qualcomm Technologies’ modem, we have not only broken the gigabit speed barrier but have exceeded existing performance using Nokia 4.9G technology, showing the way forward for higher-quality user experiences and services with fiber-like speeds over mobile connections.”

The tests come on the heels of Ookla’s 2017 U.S. Market report that ranked T-Mobile as the leader for fastest mobile speeds across the country. More on that here.

Verizon was the first to cross the 1 Gbps barrier on a 4G LTE network back in August, when the carrier achieved peak sppeds of 1.07 Gbps in collaboration with Qualcomm and Ericsson. More on that here.

Those headed to Mobile World congress Americas 2017 in San Francisco next week can check out 1.2 Gbps data rate demos at Nokia and Qualcomm Technologies’ booths.

Check out the speed test in the video below: