Singapore’s second largest mobile operator StarHub said it has demoed peak download speeds of 600Mb/s using Nokia Networks’ 4X4 MIMO (multiple input multiple output) technology with LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) carrier aggregation in a technical trial.

The two firms also claim to have successfully tested tri-band carrier aggregation using a commercial mobile device and said the trials of 4×4 MIMO and multiband carrier aggregation pave the way towards even faster mobile broadband in future. Future networks will likely use massive MIMO technologies to address the expected hundreds of thousands of data applications sharing the same network, each with its own requirements.

LTE-A 4X4 MIMO technology doubles download speeds using four transmit and four receive antennas for communication between a mobile device and the base station.

Ray Owen, Nokia’s head of Singapore, Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, said the trials show that its technology can support StarHub in coping with the forthcoming data deluge, a scenario wherein networks have to be ready to deal with download demands of gigabytes per person per day.

At the end of February South Korea’s SK Telecom also demoed a data download speed of 600Mb/s using Nokia’s 4X4 MIMO technology combined with carrier aggregation.