The record was set, says Ericsson, in the Faroe Islands, in the North Atlantic, midway between Scotland, Iceland and Norway.
Jan Ziskasen (pictured), CEO of Faroese Telecom – officially Føroya Tele – said: “Our ambition is to have giga speed everywhere on the islands – in cities as well as in small villages, on roads, in tunnels, on mountaintops and even out to sea.”
Faroese Telecom and Ericsson said they conducted a speed test in a live network showing download peak speeds of up to 6Gbps, using 5G millimetre wave spectrum.
It is the fastest measured speed in a live network in Europe to date, said Ericsson, which will deploy the technology across all 18 islands in the Faroes, a self-governing nation associated with Denmark. The aim is to deliver high capacity, multi-gigabit, mobile broadband speeds in both suburban and rural areas.
The Faroes cover an area of 1,400 sq km of land, with 300,000 sq km of sea and a population of 54,000.
Ziskasen said: “Digital inclusion is a main pillar in our sustainability agenda thus reaching every centimetre and every person located on our 18 islands is paramount. This will bring unprecedented services to our consumers and businesses where world-class 5G gives key infrastructure for developing products and services paving the way for the future.”
Coverage will reach 120km out to sea in all directions, said Ericsson.
Niclas Backlund, country manager of Ericsson Denmark, said: “Rocky volcanic islands and rapidly changing weather is not stopping either them or us from bringing the latest 5G technology to the North Atlantic Sea.”
For the speed test Ericsson aggregated 800MHz of 5G mmWave spectrum and 40MHz of 4G frequency division duplex (FDD) spectrum to achieve a downlink speed of 5.9Gbps, received on a smartphone.
