AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners, and Telstra announced they have entered into an agreement with Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to build a new international subsea cable system that will connect Singapore, Indonesia and Australia.
A leading Chinese telecommunications organization has announced plans to introduce 4G services as a mobile network operator (MVNO) in Hong Kong in April. China Telecom which is the third largest operator in the country will launch its new services under the CTExcel brand. The operator boats over 215 million mobile connections in China and was awarded an MVNO license from Hong Kong’s Communications Authority last year.
Singapore telecom operators Singtel and StarHub have acquired the majority of spectrum that was auctioned in Singapore of three frequency bands, which generated SDG1.15 billion ($822 million). The auction was held by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) which auctioned off 175MHz of spectrum in the 700MHz, 900MHz and 2.5GHz bands. Winners will be able to use their new spectrum on July 1.
SoftBank announced on March 15 that it was granted an experimental license to conduct tests on the 28GHz frequency band, a candidate for 5G in Japan. SoftBank will commence indoor and outdoor trials in Tokyo Waterfront City (Daiba District) using the 28GHz band with a view to future commercial deployment.
Australian operator Optus announced a strategic partnership with the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Corporation (GOLDOC) and Commonwealth Games Australia (CGA) that will see it become the official support network of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC2018) and provide the event’s communications infrastructure and managed services.
Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies and Australia’s Telstra are planning to conduct interoperability testing and an over-the-air field trial based on the expected 5G New Radio (NR) specifications being developed by 3GPP, which will form the basis of the global standards.
Ericsson has completed the first demonstration of 5G in Indonesia, including 5G test bed, 5G New Radio (NR) and use cases such as a motion-sensing robotic arm and live 4K video streaming.
On February 28, KT CEO Chang-Gyu Hwang, presented the Pyeongchang 5G Specification-based on 5G End-to-End Network at the MWC 2017, held for four days from February 27 in Barcelona, Spain. This is the first time that a perfect 5G mobile network interlocked with 5G terminals, base stations, and core devices is being presented.
Recently, MTN South Africa, Qualcomm Technologies and Huawei jointly completed a 4x4 MIMO field trial in a live network, where the average download throughput increased by 74 percent compared to traditional LTE 2x2 MIMO. Based on that excellent performance of the technology, MTN plans to rollout South Africa's largest 4x4 MIMO network in 2017 to provide users with the best 4.5G experience.
Nokia is providing Xiaomi, a leading electronics manufacture and Internet service provider in China, with a state-of-the-art fiber optic network to link 7 data centers in the Beijing region. The new network will enable the fast-growing company to reduce bottlenecks in its data transport network and bring higher-speed, lower latency Internet services to its customers.
