Exclusive: AT&T LTE Hits 537Mbps in Chicago

AT&T is striking the Windy Urban center like a hurricane. At several sites in downtown Chicago, nosotros tasted AT&T's new LAA cellular network and got download speeds upwardly to a scorching 537Mbps with a Samsung Galaxy S9.

We used a regular retail phone, standing on an ordinary street using the public network. This isn't a test site. Our AT&T experience makes for a wicked followup to our visit to a single T-Mobile LAA site in midtown Manhattan, and it shows that high-speed competition is heating up in major US cities.

LAA, or Licensed Assisted Access, lets wireless carriers use 5GHz unlicensed spectrum (considered by most people to exist Wi-Fi spectrum) as part of their LTE networks. It's being installed by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and slowly spreading across the nearly congested parts of major cities.

This is an urban solution, because LAA spectrum doesn't travel very far. The iv cells we checked out in Chicago had radiuses of nigh 150 feet to 400 feet, which is on par with some of the big public Wi-Fi solutions nosotros've seen. Also, like Wi-Fi, it isn't very proficient at penetrating walls.

AT&T is rolling out LAA and gigabit-course 4G technologies in several cities. LA, San Francisco, and Indianapolis are also getting the LAA handling right now, and AT&T has previously said it intends to launch LAA in at to the lowest degree 24 cities in 2022.

We achieved our smashing outcome by aggregating 15MHz of LTE Band 2 spectrum, the old 1900MHz band, with 60MHz (three 20MHz carriers) of LAA.

AT&T LAA node in Chicago

The LAA small prison cell sites in downtown Chicago (above) fit onto light poles. Fabricated primarily by Ericsson, they consist of a blackness cylinder at the summit of the light pole with the antennas, and a larger black box almost halfway down belongings the radio equipment.

The iv sites in Chicago showed dissimilar performance, based on their level of congestion and that of surrounding sites. According to AT&T, they're function of a C-RAN setup, which links together a bunch of small prison cell sites and gives them one, consolidated internet backhaul connection. That's much easier to prepare than if you had to give every site its own connection to the internet, but it can mean the effects of congestion get spread across a whole C-RAN unit of measurement.

At Kinzie and Dearborn in River North, we averaged 273Mbps down. At the second site, by the Merchandise Mart a petty ways abroad, we striking an average of 424.2Mbps. The tertiary site, in the South Loop, averaged 468.6Mbps (including that one 537Mbps result), and the terminal site, as well in the S Loop area, showed 290Mbps.

Galaxy S9 AT&T results

Above: Our Ookla Speedtest.net results on our Galaxy S9; a service mode screen showing the LAA Band 46 connectedness.

LAA improves downloads a lot. Uploads however run on the dedicated LTE spectrum: nosotros got between 33 and 43Mbps downwards on all of the sites. The LAA sites also showed meliorate latency than virtually LTE sites, past a few milliseconds.

Who needs 537Mbps on their cell phone? No one. In this case, speeds are a proxy for chapters. If our single device could get 537Mbps, that means ten devices will chug along at a happy 50Mbps each without choking upwardly the cell or the spectrum.

You'll need an LAA-compatible phone to run in this fast lane. That means a Samsung Galaxy S8, Note viii, or S9, their variants, a Motorola Z2 Force Edition, or an LG V30. Most notably, no iPhone all the same has LAA.

iPhone results in Chicago on AT&T LAA

Speedtest results on an iPhone X.

With iPhones traditionally strong at AT&T, nosotros compared an unlocked (Qualcomm model) iPhone X in the same locations. We got 92Mbps, 93Mbps, 201Mbps, and 173Mbps downloads, respectively. The fastest single result was 205Mbps. That's all pretty fast, simply it'due south a fraction of the speed and capacity LAA brings. And then every bit these sites build out, iPhones without LAA may announced to asphyxiate up on the network more speedily than LAA-compatible phones. We look this year'southward upcoming iPhones will support LAA.

We'll be looking for LAA as we drive around with Milky way S9 phones on our Fastest Mobile Networks trip in May, which will take in several of AT&T'south target cities.