Verizon claims to be the first US operator to hit the elusive gigabit data rate on an LTE network, achieving a peak of 1.07Gbps in a test with Qualcomm and Ericsson. Others have hit the gigabit level before, but none in North America – and the more operators which are convinced that Gigabit LTE is realistic, the more may be inclined to postpone mass market 5G deployment, especially if they have not yet sorted out new enterprise business models to justify a new network (see lead items). According to Verizon, its test used 12 LTE streams on three 20 MHz channels of licensed FDD spectrum, with speeds further boosted by 4×4 MIMO antenna array and 256QAM modulation. Trial equipment included…