Rogers Wireless today announced that it has turned on LTE-Advanced capabilities in 12 Canadian cities to bring even greater download speeds to its customers. Billed as “the next evolution of wireless technology,” the technology combines Rogers’ 700MHz and AWS spectrum to offer download speeds up to 150Mbps to a growing range of devices and across more markets.
“This new network technology allows us to combine our 700MHz beachfront spectrum with AWS, the backbone of our LTE network, to give our customers an even better and faster video experience. It’s like putting the highways in a major city together to make a superhighway, allowing more traffic at faster speeds,” said Guy Laurence, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Rogers already offered such speeds to devices supporting its 2600MHz spectrum but carrier aggregation as the technology is known will allow it to offer those kinds of speeds to more customers.
Rogers is well aware that video consumption on mobile devices is growing quickly. For example, some 80,000 hockey fans are now using their mobile devices to live stream hockey. It could account for more than half of all online video views within a year. As that number grows (and not just for hockey), Rogers will certainly use this to attract more customers.
Note all LTE devices will be able to take advantage of this new technology. Only newer devices such as the Apple iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and devices sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 or better processor will benefit. Devices like the Samsung Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 4, BlackBerry Passport and LG G3 are among these.
LTE-Advanced is available as of today in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Windsor, London, Hamilton, Toronto, Kingston,Moncton, Fredericton, Halifax and Saint John. Rogers is also promising that additional markets will follow.
Source : Rogers Wireless