Network News

Chinese vendor ZTE is refocusing its strategic sales plan towards Japan in a bid to secure a number of lucrative 5G contracts ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Japan’s largest mobile operator, NTT DOCOMO, has signed an agreement with Nokia to supply 5G baseband products for aiming to deploy in a 5G mobile network planned to be in commercial service by 2020.

A mobile hot-spot network featuring an extremely fast 1.25Gbps data transmission has been developed for public transportation systems by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in South Korea. A pilot project featuring the new technology in Seoul's subway lines will begin later this year.

Australia’s largest telecom provider Telstra announced a major step forward in the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) in Australia with the successful deployment of Narrowband technology in its IoT Network.

Singapore’s leading telecommunications provider achieved a world first mobile peak speed with Ericsson on 12 February. Singtel achieved 1Gbps mobile peak speed on Ericsson’s quad-band FDD/TDD Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology. This will enable Singtel to optimize the usage of its newly acquired 2500 MHz spectrum band and enhance the consumer’s mobile experience.

In a global first, Indian telecom provider Bharti Airtel successfully deployed three radio technologies (GSM, UMTS, LTE) on the 900MHz band within an 8.8MHz spectral bandwidth by using Huawei’s CloudAIR solution to deliver a superior 4G experience to its customers. Bharti Airtel is India’s largest mobile operator.

Australian telecom provider Optus has announced its intention to commence the roll out of 5G technology in Australia by early 2019 with a fixed wireless product in key metro areas. This announcement follows the launch of a successful outdoor trial for 5G New Radio, which showed 2Gbps download speeds using a potential device for a fixed wireless service in the home and business.

Spark, New Zealand’s largest telecom provider is building a long-range (LoRa) network to enable Internet of Things (IoT) in New Zealand’s most populated urban areas, switching on sites in Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland in time for the New Year.

China Telecom and Huawei have collaborated to deliver a detailed report entitled ‘5G Network Slicing Enabling Smart Grid’ which provides the results of the detailed analysis from a 5G network slicing project they duo embarked upon.

Singaporean telecom provider Singtel and Ericsson achieved an Asia-Pacific first in wireless technology by delivering a peak speed of 1.1Gbps in a joint trial of a new configuration of Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology.