Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) has announced the selection of Swedish vendor Ericsson to deploy its Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) tri-band Carrier Aggregation (CA) upgrade, which it says will give subscribers access to peak download speeds of 450Mbps on its 4G network. Currently, Singtel is utilising a dual-carrier LTE signal for its 4G customers, but Ericsson claims the tri-band CA overlay will significantly improve end users’ experience when it comes to downloading applications, games, videos and music files. The two-year rollout will kick off with a series of trials, starting in the second quarter of this year, with Korea’s Samsung lined up to act as device partner for the tests. New tri-band handset models capable of supporting the evolved LTE-A service are expected to be available later this year.

Commenting on the development, Yuen Kuan Moon, Singtel’s CEO of Consumer Singapore, said: ‘With smartphone penetration rates of over 85% in Singapore, data download speed is very important to our customers. This is why we continue to invest in improving our technology to ensure we deliver the fastest and most consistent experience to our customers.’