(Telecompaper) Ericsson has announced that it has achieved a peak rate of 450 Mbps in live tests of License Assisted Access (LAA) technology conducted at its labs in Canada and Sweden. LAA, or LTE-U as it is sometimes known, works by co-opting unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz band to provide complementary access for the LTE operator network, enhancing indoor coverage above all. The company said it worked together with Qualcomm Technologies to combine 20 MHz on licensed and 40 MHz on 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum on small cells, enabling what it described as "fair sharing" of spectrum between mobile and Wi-Fi devices. Ericsson added that executives from operators such as Verizon, SK Telecom and T-Mobile US witnessed the demonstration and are already testing the performance of LAA on their networks. The Swedish company said LAA was a key milestone on the road to 5G and would be added to its indoor small cell portfolio, including the Ericsson RBS 6402 Indoor Picocell (targeted at smaller buildings under 50,000 square feet) and the Ericsson Radio Dot System (for medium and large buildings), starting in the fourth quarter of the year. Both Ericsson and Qualcomm will be giving demonstrations of LAA at their respective stands at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona from 02 to 05 March.