Dish’s technical breakthrough means faster speeds for customers

Dish Wireless collaborated with Qualcomm Technologies and Samsung to successfully test simultaneous 5G 2x uplink and 4x downlink carrier aggregation (CA) using Frequency-Division Duplexing (FDD) spectrum across FDD bands n71, n70 and n66. The result, according to Dish, is that it was able to achieve 200 Mbps peak uplink speeds with just 35 MHz of 5G spectrum and 1.3 Gbps peak downlink speeds with just 75 MHz of spectrum. According to Daryl Schoolar, analyst and director at Recon Analytics, this achievement is significant for Dish because while operators have been able to do downlink CA using multiple FDD bands, uplink CA is very new. Schooler added that Dish’s announcement demonstrates that this capability can be delivered over a commercial 5G network and Dish will benefit from it as it grows its subscriber base. “Increasing network capacity will be important given that Dish trails its three largest U.S. mobile competitors in lower-spectrum holdings,” he said.