LTE Advanced (LTE-A) has been demonstrated for the first time in Africa by Angola telecoms provider Unitel in partnership with communications technology provider Ericsson.

LTE Carrier Aggregation technology is the next step up in the evolution of high-speed mobile broadband services, enabling operators to make the most of their existing spectrum assets by combining multiple spectrum bands to enable higher download speeds..

The demonstration, which took place last year December, was done on both 1,800MHz and 900MHz spectrum bands on a commercial network.

Data was transferred across a live network in the country's capital city Luanda carrying commercial traffic.

“With this demo, we are well on the way to launching the most advanced mobile network in Angola and perhaps Africa in the near future,” said Amilcar Safeca, deputy chief executive officer of Unitel.

Angola was one of the first countries in Africa to launch an LTE network in 2012 when Movicel unveiled the offering in Luanda.