USA carrier T-Mobile has completed live field testing of mobile broadband data session using License Assisted Access (LAA) on its commercial network. The field testing, which began in Los Angeles yesterday, showed 741 Mbps download speeds using 80 MHz of aggregated spectrum, according to the operator.

USA carrier T-Mobile has completed live field testing of mobile broadband data session using License Assisted Access (LAA) on its commercial network. The field testing, which began in Los Angeles yesterday, showed 741 Mbps download speeds using 80 MHz of aggregated spectrum, according to the operator.

In addition, T-Mobile has made LTE-U available to customers. LTE-U uses publicly available 5 GHz airwaves to bolster existing LTE capacity and give a speed boost to operator’s 4G LTE network. T-Mobile LTE-U is live in select locations in Bellevue, WA; Brooklyn, NY; Dearborn, MI; Las Vegas, NV; Richardson, TX; and Simi Valley, CA, with more rolling out later this year.

Earlier this year, the FCC cleared the way for LTE in unlicensed spectrum, enabling wireless providers to use unlicensed airwaves in the 5 GHz band that are frequently underutilized. LTE-U and LAA devices and equipment intelligently tap into and share underutilized unlicensed spectrum without affecting other users on the same band, including those using conventional Wi-Fi.