Ericsson and SmarTone, the leading mobile network operator in Hong Kong, have taken a significant step toward 5G with the successful trial of Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in a live over-the-air demonstration in Hong Kong.

Together with MTS, the largest mobile network operator in Russia, and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, Ericsson has conducted the first successful live trial with a commercial small cell product of Rel-13 Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in Russia.

T-Mobile announced on June 26 it had completed the United States' first mobile broadband data session live in the field using License Assisted Access (LAA) on its commercial network. The field testing, which began in Los Angeles, showed blazing 741 Mbps download speeds using 80 MHz of aggregated spectrum.

In a US wireless industry first, Verizon, Ericsson, and Qualcomm Technologies announced on August 2 they reached 953 Mbps (just under 1 gigabit per second) in a joint commercial network deployment in Boca Raton, Florida. While lab tests have shown comparable speeds in recent months, this is the fastest announced speed achieved in a real-world, dynamic network environment leveraging Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology.