Telecom New Zealand has introduced carrier aggregation (CA) technology on six of its 4G mobile sites, in Auckland, in cooperation with technology partner Huawei, reports Telegeography.com, noting that Telecom NZ expects to have CA-capable devices commercially available on its network by the end of 2014, or early next year. The CA technology uses a 20-MHz block in the 1,800-MHz band and 20-MHz in the 2,600-MHz band.

Its COO, David Havercroft, commented, “Carrier aggregation on our network allows for theoretical peak speeds of 300-Mbps and our testing has seen speeds on live sites of up to 260-Mbps download. This is roughly double the theoretical peak speeds on our existing 4G network and more than seven times the theoretical peak available on 3G”.

Telecom started its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network back in November, in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The telco recently announced that it intends to extend its 4G reach to a number of other towns over the next few months, including Dunedin, Rotorua, Blenheim and Nelson.