Nokia Solutions and Networks and Sprint today announced that the companies have achieved speeds of 2.6 Gbps in the lab using TD-LTE, breaking a previous company record of 1.6 Gbps. According to a press statement, Sprint used an aggregated 120 MHz of Sprint’s TDD spectrum and a Nokia Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station to achieve the results.

Back in October Sprint announced they'd be combining the company's 800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz LTE spectrum to provide what Sprint promises will be real-world downstream speeds of 50-60 Mbps. Those upgrades have slowly been making the rounds, but require you have a tri-band phone to appreciate.

In a blog post, Sprint CTO Stephen Bye acknowledges that while 2.6 Gbps isn't real-world performance, the company's Spark upgrades should ultimately allow for maximum downstream speeds of 180 Mbps "by late next year."

While lab speed increases are important, Sprint obviously has a lot of work to do in the real world, where an endless line of network performance tests have put Sprint's LTE network in last place not only in terms of speed, but latency as well. While Spark will deliver a much-needed boost to many users, many major markets are still waiting for any Sprint LTE launch whatsoever. With Sprint, the network you'll actually want to use always seems to be just around the corner.