The Canadian telco is working with Ericsson to trial 5G technology
Canadian telecom operator Rogers Communications confirmed plans to deploy thousands of small cells as part of its 5G efforts, the company’s President and CEO Joe Natale said during a conference call with investors.
“With respect to network evolution, we continue to make steady progress on our 5G deployment plan. We assigned key strategic agreements with more to come and plans are underway to deploy thousands of small cells,” Natale said. “We are working with Ericsson, the 5G North American partner of choice, to densify our network with small and macro cells,” he added.
Natale also highlighted that the carrier continues to upgrade its 4.5G network with 5G-ready technology. The telco is also currently testing a new set of global 5G standards released just last month, he said.
“All 4.5G investments we’re making right now in our network will all be 5G-ready. Software upgradable to 5G is where we’re headed with that capability. And including some of the small cell work that we’re doing is all sort of 5G-ready, 5G capable. If you talk to operators across the globe, a number of them that invested in 4.5G and small cells early in the cycle now are finding they have to go through some very significant upgrades to make them ready and capable for 5G,” Natale said.
“Our technology team has been working hard to test the capabilities. We are working very close with Ericsson on whole series of 5G tests with various pieces of equipment and various frequencies,” the executive added.
In April, Rogers Communications announced a multi-year initiative through which it aims to deploy 5G technology in partnership with Ericsson.
Rogers’ network plan includes the continued rollout of its gigabit LTE network with technology and equipment that is based on the latest global 3GPP standards, including 4×4 multiple-input-multiple-output, four-carrier aggregation and 256 QAM. The Canadian operator also plans to boost and densify its network with small cells and macro sites across the country.
Through the partnership with Ericsson, Rogers will trial 5G technology in Toronto and Ottawa, in addition to select cities over the next year.
Natale also said that the company is seeing increasing growth opportunities in the machine-to-machine segment with the firm’s current 4.5G capabilities
“On machine-to-machine front, there is an opportunity right now that doesn’t require 5G. We’re seeing growth in IoT as we speak with 4.5G capability and NB-IoT. We are right now the market leader in Canada in machine-to-machine IoT,” the executive said. “Then we continue to focus in that area. We believe that we have a natural ability to propagate our leadership through 4.5G and then eventually to 5G. I think 5G is going to be a massive next step on that front because it will bring near zero latency, 10 millisecond latency capability to devices which will allow for a lot more real-time applications.”
