Australia might just be getting Cat 4 LTE now, but there’s a new king in town, and it brings in more mobile speed than anything before it.
The first of its kind, Huawei is introducing Category 6 LTE connectivity at Mobile World Congress, a wireless technology which has the potential to deliver download speeds of up to 300Mbps.
To put that into perspective, conventional 4G LTE is Category 3 or “Cat3” for short, and provides up to speeds of 100Mbps over downloads. In Australia, Cat3 is offered by Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone in most places.
Vodafone is, however, rolling out Category 4 or “Cat4” LTE in Australia, with some places able to achieve up to 150Mbps downloads on their handsets, and we’ve heard other local telcos are inching towards including Category 4 LTE on their networks, too.
But this week’s introduction of Category 6 is something different altogether, and Huawei is using this technology in its E5786 mobile WiFi hotspot.
“With the Huawei E5786, Huawei is catering to the growing consumer demand for fast and reliable connectivity anytime, anywhere,” said Huawei’s Richard Yu.
Speeds as high as 300Mbps can be found on the frequency division LTE networks most Australians use, while the time division LTE network support is also being thrown in, a technology employed by Optus which in some areas will see speeds as high as 224Mbps.
The hotspot looks to be about the same size as most other WiFi hotspots out there, weighing in at 145 grams and measuring 15.8mm slim, with a small screen built into the unit, and support for 802.11ac WiFi, which is especially important when you consider the possible mobile broadband speeds on offer here.
MicroUSB 3.0 support is also here, with charging happening over that port, capable of up to 10 hours of LTE life from a three hour charge, with around 500 hours of standby time.
Pricing for the Huawei E5786 isn’t yet known, though it will be coming to Australia, likely in May.
Now all we need is telco support for the Cat6 LTE technology. Anyone want to take that: Telstra? Vodafone? Optus? Anyone?
