Telecom Italia is the latest operator to join the LTE-A club, having launched a trial run of the technology on TIM’s 4G network in Turin, according to Telecompaper.com on July 25, 2014. The operator announced that the trial was the first live test of LTE-A technology to be opened to the public, allowing customers to achieve download speeds of 180 Mbps, around twice the highest theoretical speed currently available on Italian mobile networks. The speed was possible thanks to carrier aggregation, in this case combining the 1,800 MHz and 2,600 MHz spectrum bands.

Telecom Italia said it has been developing its LTE-A product for over a year in partnership with Huawei, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies. The pilot scheme will run until July 31 at special stations set up at the TIM store on Turin’s Via Roma.