Singtel, the largest mobile operator in Singapore, and Sweden-based equipment vendor Ericsson aggregated two licensed and three unlicensed spectrum bands in a joint trial to deliver a peak download speed of 1.1Gb/s.

The lab trial used Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in a 12-layer configuration which Singtel said will enable peak data rates of two- to three-times current maximum LTE speeds.

Mark Chong, Singtel’s group CTO, said a large percentage of mobile traffic in Singapore is generated indoors and the operator is “now in a position to deploy LAA technology to boost our LTE mobile capacity to meet increasing traffic demand”.

Following this trial, Chong said Singtel will explore the feasibility of deploying the technology on its network.

Singtel completed a trial of pre-standard LAA technology in July 2016 using 20MHz of licensed 1.8GHz spectrum and 20MHz in the unlicensed 5GHz band. The stationary live test, using Ericson’s indoor small cells, achieved a throughput of 275Mb/s, while a second test showed LAA’s ability to co-exist with Wi-Fi signals without impacting user experience.

In August Hong Kong mobile operator SmarTone and Ericsson conducted a trial of LAA technology over a live network in the territory. The field trial, which the companies claimed was a first in Hong Kong, aggregated 10MHz of licensed LTE spectrum with three 20MHz bands of unlicensed 5GHz spectrum to achieve peak download speeds of up to 800Mb/s.

Singtel is the second operator in the space of a week to report it broke the 1Gb/s mark in a 12-layer LAA trial with Ericsson: T-Mobile US also hit 1.1Gb/s in a lab test aggregating two licensed with three unlicensed spectrum bands.