Ericsson and Orange Demo 5G Mobile Speeds of 15.41Gbps in France

French telecoms giant Orange has teamed up with Ericsson to demonstrate a “live field trial” of future 5G based Mobile Broadband technology, which was able to deliver data speeds beyond 10Gbps (Gigabits per second). But the details remain frustratingly sparse.

The achievement certainly sounds impressive and appears to bring us much closer to achieving the peak performance of 20Gbps, which the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has set down as part of their expectations for the official IMT-2020 standard.

However it’s difficult to judge the true merits of this achievement when Ericsson fails to offer up any useful information about what spectrum bands were used, over what distances and in what kind of environment. A closer inspection reveals that a video has also been released and the setup looks a lot more like a close-range lab test than a truly representative field trial.

According to Alain Maloberti, Senior VP of Orange Labs Networks, “The significant increase in throughputs, including on the move, is one of the promises of 5G. These ever-increasing speeds will be needed for new use cases such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, or the needs of business environments. Thanks to our 5G partnership with Ericsson, we are preparing the future of networks.”

Elsewhere Ericsson has also conducted a “live demonstration” of 5G technology in Thailand today, which achieved a peak throughput of 5.7Gbps and latency as low as 3ms (milliseconds). But once again they were unable to provide any useful details about the setup.