X16

Earlier this year Netgear introduced its Nighthawk M1 router, powered by Qualcomm’s X16 LTE modem and is the first Gigabit LTE router on the market. Right now, the device is available on Telstra’s 4GX LTE network in Australia, but the router made a surprise appearance at the MWC 2017 show and it will actually hit the market in Europe later this year. There is a catch however: there will not be a lot of Gigabit LTE deployments because of technical challenges. The Netgear Nighthawk M1 is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 LTE modem (paired with Qualcomm’s WTR5975 RF transceiver) that uses 4×4 MIMO, three carrier aggregation (3CA) and 256QAM modulation to download data at up to 1 Gbps (in select areas) as well as 64QAM...