Du, a leading telecom provider in the Middle East, has launched the first LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) live network in the UAE, which would offer mobile broadband speeds up to 225Mbps.

The launch makes du the first telco with CAT-6 ready LTE network in the UAE, marking an important step closer to 5G technology, a statement said.

The new capability targets the significant increase in the average user throughput in addition to the superior coverage. Significantly, this also paves the way for more leading smartphone manufacturers to commercially launch an expanded range of LTE-A CAT-6 handsets in the UAE.

Saleem AlBlooshi, executive vice president, Network Development and Operations, du, said: “We are proud of achieving this tremendous milestone. This is a result of our ‘smart investment’ strategy that puts customers at the heart of our focus and we are very keen on introducing capabilities that can be utilized and experienced by our customers immediately, much beyond simply focusing on announcing higher speeds.”

“Having said that, it is important to note that we have invested in such technology once we started to get confirmation from the major smartphone manufacturers that this capability (aka CAT-6 capable handsets) is readily available in many of these new smartphones already launched in the UAE. With our launch of LTE-A in the UAE, customers using any of these new CAT-6 smartphones will enjoy new unprecedented speeds when in an area covered using this new technology,” he added.

CAT-6 denotes the LTE Handset Category information (Category 6) which is used to allow the mobile network to communicate at a higher speed and be able to combine two bands as specified in 3GPP. The CAT-6 commercial smartphones started to be available at the beginning of 2015, the statement said. - TradeArabia News Service