The German telecoms company said this was the world’s first successful demonstration of 4G voice and data connectivity over a platform flying at the edge of the stratosphere and fully integrated into a commercial mobile network.
At the beginning of October, several test flights were carried out in Bavaria with a remote-controlled aircraft system at an altitude of approximately 14km.
The antennas installed on the aircraft allowed a smartphone on the ground to achieve download speeds of 70Mbps and upload speeds of 20Mbps in the 2.1GHz range over a channel bandwidth of 10MHz.
The high flight altitude, coupled with an almost unobstructed view of the ground, should allow an airplane to use special antennas to supply radio cells with a diameter of up to 100km, boosting the coverage of existing mobile phone networks on the ground.
For customers, the transition of the connection from a classic cellular mast to a flying antenna happens smoothly in the background...