Nokia, Elisa and Qualcomm achieve record 8 Gbps speed on a Commercial 5G Network on mmWave Spectrum

Last month, Elisa, a leading mobile operator in Finland selected Nokia as the nationwide supplier of 5G RAN. As a part of the partnership, Nokia provides its AirScale 5G RAN portfolio that delivers enhanced ultra-fast, low-latency mobile broadband services. 

Recently, Nokia, Elisa, and Qualcomm achieved the world’s fastest 5G speeds on a commercial network in Finland by delivering 8 Gbps for the first time, serving two 5G mmWave devices connected simultaneously. As per the company’s claims, the base station utilised two Nokia AirScale radios, each using 800 MHz of commercial millimeter-wave 5G spectrum at 26 GHz. 

These provided connectivity to two 5G smartphone form factor test devices powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System featuring second-generation Qualcomm QTM525 mmWave antenna modules, with each device reaching 4 Gbps peak speeds from the base station.

The operator demonstrated the setup at its flagship store in Helsinki, Finland. Elisa plans to launch a consumer mmWave offer in 2021. This solution is tipped to unlock opportunities for high-speed video downloads, mission-critical or virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) applications.

To be more specific, users can download 4K video content, download triple-A games in a matter of seconds, as well as enabling enhanced capacity fixed wireless access connectivity as a fiber broadband alternative.

Sami Komulainen, Executive Vice President, Production at Elisa, said:

This is an important development and another step in our efforts to bring the fastest speeds and best 5G experiences to our customers. Elisa was the first in Finland and amongst the first in the world to deploy 5G. Reaching 8Gbps is a natural step in our 5G development and we want to explore the possibilities 5G offers and push the technology further to benefit our customers.