Gigabit. Think about that. Up to one billion bits of information delivered to a mobile device in a mere second. And for those keeping track, that’s LTE Category 16.

Do you remember the thrill of experiencing your first 4G LTE device in action? This was a transformative moment for many people, and it has spurred the creation of new apps and experiences in mobile that were simply not possible before. Now, with the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, we’re talking about peak download speeds that are nearly ten times as fast as those first generation 4G LTE devices.

Incredibly, peak download speeds are not the most impressive thing about the X16 LTE modem. Rather, it is how those speeds are achieved that is the key to this modem’s true power and potential.

You see, in late 2014 we introduced the X10 LTE modem, which was capable of peak download speeds of 450 Mbps. It achieved these speeds by aggregating three LTE carriers, each 20 MHz wide, for a total of 60 MHz of spectrum. The X16 LTE modem achieves up to 1 Gbps—more than 100 percent faster throughput than the X10—on that same amount of spectrum. That is truly astonishing.

How does it achieve this? By using more antennas and more-sophisticated digital signal processing. The Snapdragon X16 LTE modem can receive 10 streams of LTE data simultaneously using four antennas, and uses better signal processing to extract more bits out of every LTE transmission, boosting the throughput of each of the 10 streams to around 100 Mbps. Qualcomm Technologies was the first to introduce this type of digital signal processing with the X12 LTE modem (both the discrete version as well as integrated in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor), and we’re extending the technology with X16 LTE to 10 simultaneous streams instead of only six. You can read more about both of those techniques in the “Appendix for Nerds” below.

Counting the number of simultaneous LTE streams, and the throughput of each of those streams, thus becomes the new way to measure and compare LTE modem capability—the foundation for all connected mobile experiences.

But it gets even better. The Snapdragon X16 LTE modem is the very first to support LTE Advanced Pro, the next generation of LTE. With that, it supports a technology called Licensed Assisted Access (LAA). And it has the potential to vastly expand the number of operators that can offer Gigabit Class LTE service to their customers.

LAA, and its predecessor, LTE in unlicensed spectrum (LTE-U), are truly transformative technologies. They forever change how mobile networks are deployed, and open the door to more network capacity and faster speeds for users. How? They allow operators around the world to utilize free-to-use unlicensed spectrum to increase the number of LTE connections supported by their networks. LTE-U and LAA technology, combined with advanced antenna and digital signal processing techniques, enables operators worldwide, with as little as 20 MHz of licensed spectrum, to use LTE carriers in unlicensed spectrum to offer Gigabit Class LTE service.