Last year we announced a partnership between EE and Wembley Stadium to create the most connected stadium in the world. With EE’s 4G+ service set to be switched on in March, the network has been testing an advanced form of carrier aggregation at the stadium with impressive results.
This week EE took part in 4G network trials at Wembley Stadium with the aim of delivering mobile speeds of over 400 Mbps. In conjunction with Huawei and Qualcomm, EE gave a live demonstration of the new 4G network and achieved record breaking mobile speeds of over 400 Mbps.
In order to achieve these speeds, EE combined three LTE carriers – 20MHz of 1800MHz spectrum, 20MHz of 2.6GHz spectrum, and a further 15GHz of 2.6GHz spectrum. A Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 810 processor with X10 LTE was used for the demonstration. CAT 9 smartphones are required to use carrier aggregation to combine three bands so this isn’t something that consumers will be able to use until these enter the market next year, but it’s a great demonstration of the potential of 4G.
EE will switch on 4G+ at Wembley Stadium at the end of March. While visitors to the stadium are unlikely to achieve 400 Mbps speeds, real world peak speeds are expected to be around 150 Mbps, with CAT 6 modems. Just like the trials, this will use carrier aggregation to combine two bands of EE’s spectrum – 20MHz in each of the 1800MHz and 2.6GHz bands. This will give visitors the data capacity and speeds they need to stream goal replays, check mobile sports apps, upload selfies and share the videos on social networks. Fans will be able to connect, share, and stream in the world’s most connected stadium. They’ll even be able to control the specialist interactive lighting system installed on Wembley’s iconic arch using their mobiles and social sentiment.
According to Fotis Karonis, CTO at EE, “We have established ourselves as the most advanced and innovative network in Europe, and we will continue to stay ahead of the curve, in terms of both speed and capacity. Smarter devices with more data intensive video and audio demands are launching all the time, and it’s trials like these at Wembley Stadium that allow us to ensure EE customers continue to get the very best experiences from their mobile network now and in the future. This is a showcase of what a truly amazing 4G network can do, and is a big step in our ambition to make Wembley Stadium the most connected stadium in the world.”
As part of the partnership, EE has installed a bespoke audio-visual display at Wembley Stadium to illustrate the importance of speed and capacity in the mobile experience, and to provide an interactive gig experience including numerous 4K and HD screens and high quality audio streaming. This Wembley Stadium live experience was created by EE working with award winning digital artists and engineers from DARE and Jason Bruges Studio, and is designed to show how EE’s network will cope with 90,000 visitors all accessing it in unison.