Rogers becomes first Canadian carrier to aggregate LTE spectrum

Rogers Communications Inc. said Friday it has become the first Canadian wireless carrier to combine spectrum bands for enhanced LTE service, a move it said will improve the mobile-video experience of its customers, particularly those streaming hockey coverage. It has implemented technology that allows it to use 700 MHz and AWS spectrum simultaneously in some areas with certain devices, using a process known as carrier aggregation. Rogers said this has allowed the joint network to achieve a standard of LTE-Advanced, often cited as the next step in the evolution of wireless networks. "With our spectrum acquisitions, we've got various different highways," Raj Doshi, Rogers' executive vice-president of consumer wireless products, said in a phone interview. "What this technology allows us to do is actually bring together highways. ... What we've done today is probably combine the Gardiner and the 401. We've allowed the traffic to flow through both of those highways so that the customers are able to get more data and more consistency and more speed." Rogers said in a press release that its aggregated service is available immediately in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary in Western Canada, Toronto, Hamilton, Kingston, London and Windsor in Ontario, Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John in New Brunswick, as well as Halifax. More areas will follow, Rogers said. Doshi said the only devices that can currently take advantage of the new service are Apple Inc.'s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and Samsung Electronics Co.'s Galaxy Note 4. He said Rogers customers who have these devices will receive notices for software updates in the near future that will allow them to access the advanced service. "Over the course of the next few years, it will become inherent in many more devices," Doshi said. An article in The Wire Report in August noted that South Korea's SK Telecom announced in January that it was the first carrier in the world to offer carrier aggregation, and companies such as AT&T and Sprint Corp. in the United States have since launched versions of the technology. Rogers would not give specifications on just how much faster the new aggregated service would be compared to what's otherwise available. "It depends on what device you're using in terms of what bands it supports," Rogers spokeswoman Jennifer Kett said in a phone interview. "It depends on what location you're in and what bands are in your area. And it depends on the network capacity." Stuart Jack, a technology analyst with Nordicity, said Rogers officials likely do not know exactly how fast its service will be. This is largely because its launch coincides with growing demand on Rogers' network due to its new hockey offerings such as NHL GameCentre Live and GamePlus, he said. "It's more about capacity," Jack said in a phone interview. "I just don't think they know what the cumulative viewership peaking demands are right now. If they put out something into the marketplace and said, 'We're going to improve it by two because we're doing the segregation,' ... they would be on the hook. So basically, under-promise or, in this case, don't promise." Rogers cited its hockey offerings as something that can be enjoyed more reliably on its new network. It said that, so far this hockey season, about 80,000 people have streamed Rogers' hockey programming on their smartphones or tablets. "In video, speed and consistency are important, and this will allow us to deliver that," Doshi said. He said getting ahead of the rise in demand for data is also a driver for this network upgrade, citing a report from Ooyala Inc. that showed video viewing on mobile devices worldwide had grown more than 700 per cent between late 2011 and the end of 2013. "To keep with the highway analogy, if you keep the highway the same and put more cars on it, you're going to get gridlock," he said. Adrian Foster, a spectrum expert with McLean Foster & Co., said the Rogers' announcement is one of many incremental improvements that have been put in place in recent years in order to create a more efficient use of spectrum. He compared it to transitions from HSPA to HSPA+ and then to LTE. "It's just signal optimization," Foster said in a phone interview. "It's what's been going on for some time. Of course now it's happening with LTE because it's the next generation of what's out there. ... I'm glad they're doing it. They're making for efficient use of the spectrum they have." — With reporting by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Rogers becomes first Canadian carrier to aggregate LTE spectrum

News | October 24, 2014

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Rogers becomes first Canadian carrier to aggregate LTE spectrum

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