Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X20 LTE modem, up to 1.2Gbps

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Qualcomm has already teased Gigabit LTE in Sydney, Australia with speeds of 930Mbps over a small router that fits into your pocket, but now they've announced their new Snapdragon X20 LTE chipset that will eventually find its way into next-gen mobile devices.

The new Snapdragon X20 LTE modem is capable of "fiber-like" speeds, with download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps - providing over 100MB/sec download speeds... on your smartphone. Qualcomm reaches this with the new LTE Category 18 technology, with support for up to 5 x 20MHz download Carrier Aggregation (CA) over unlicensed FDD and TDD radio frequencies, as well as 4x4 MIMO on up to three aggregated LTE carriers.

Qualcomm's super-fast Snapdragon X20 LTE chipset is capable of 12 simultaneous unique streams of data, and on each download stream the X20 LTE's modem and its support for 256-QAM, we're looking at peak throughput of around 100Mbps. Uplink bandwidth with 2x20MHz carrier aggregation plus 64-QAM sees upload speeds of 150Mbps.

Better yet, for different markets dual SIM functionality is a big deal - with Qualcomm supporting dual SIM on the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem.

In the US, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X20 LTE modem supports 3.5GHz shared spectrum, which is something called the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) - something Qualcomm points out can be used to "provide new services, such as private LTE-based networks. It can also be used by existing mobile operators to offer Gigabit LTE in more places by making more spectrum available".

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X20 LTE modem is the first big step towards of 5G... which is closer than you think.