Asia Pacific Telecom (APT), Ericsson and Qualcomm completed what they claim was the first data call in Taiwan running on a standalone (SA) 5G dual-connection network using mid- and high-band spectrum.

The test combined 2.6GHz and 28GHz spectrum and delivered 2.2Gb/s download rates and 600Mb/s uplink speeds with latency of about 5ms, which Ericsson stated is 50 per cent more efficient than existing non-standalone networks.

A test device equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X65 5G modem was used along with Ericsson RAN and core network, and dual connectivity software to perform carrier aggregation to connect four 100MHz contiguous spectrum blocks.

APT plans to deploy the architecture in private 5G networks for various enterprise services.

The operator launched 5G in 2020 and closed 2021 with nearly 250,000 users of the network, data from GSMA Intelligence showed.