Superfast upload speeds tend to receive far less fanfare and attention than download speeds, but fast and reliable uplinks are essential for many of the tasks that we now carry out on our mobile devices.
In an era of short-form social media, millions of hours of video footage are uploaded to platforms such as TikTok and YouTube every day.
Faster upload speeds mean less waiting, especially when using 4K footage, while real-time applications such as video conferencing, cloud gaming and Internet of Things (IoT) communication also need good uplinks to work well.
It is in the business world that faster upload speeds could be truly transformative, however, Srini Kalapala, Senior Vice President of Technology and Product Development at Verizon, said that emerging technology such as smart surveillance, industrial automation, augmented reality (AR) and generative AI models all require “massive amounts of data to be continuously uploaded for analysis, decision-making, and model training”.
Kalapala was speaking after the US mobile market leader, in collaboration with partners Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, broke US 5G upload speed records in a trial that saw them achieve 480 Mbps.
For context, the average upload speed on fixed broadband in the UK in January 2024 was 27.75 Mbps.
Faster mobile uploads can be used to meet the demands of emerging AI applications
There’s a big difference between the speeds that can be reached in a trial and those that are readily available to businesses and consumers, but the achievement showcases the potential of 5G uplinks.
Advances in potential speeds are particularly significant for time-sensitive applications such as healthcare diagnostics, remote robotics and live broadcasting, as well as AI-driven systems that need to process real-time interactions, data and video feeds.
Hannes Ekström, Vice President and Head of Customer Unit Verizon for Ericsson North America, said that hitting 480 Mbps was “a remarkable achievement” and called it a breakthrough that would “boost data upload efficiency” and meet “the high demands of real-time applications and AI-driven tasks”.
The trial used the C-Band that sits on the mid-band spectrum of 5G frequencies, specifically between 3.7 GHz and 3.98 GHz.
Verizon says that low-band spectrum offers maximum coverage but lower speeds, while higher bands offer “blazing fast speeds” but with limited range that cannot easily penetrate structures such as buildings.
It also used advanced tech including Massive MIMO TDD antenna integrated radio AIR 6449 and Ericsson’s Generation 4 RAN Processor 6672.
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