Singapore telecom regulator IMDA has confirmed it had received a total of three submissions in the process through which it expect to award two licenses for the provision of 5G services across the country
At the close of the 5G call for proposal on February 17, IMDA had received submissions from Singtel Mobile, TPG Telecom, and a joint-submission from StarHub Mobile and M1 Limited.
IMDA said that it is currently evaluating the submissions, and that it expect to award the 5G spectrum by mid-2020. This 5G spectrum auction had been initially announced by IMDA in October last year.
IMDA also said that the move aims to facilitate the rollout of 5G mobile networks by 2020, with full-fledged 5G standalone capability covering at least half of Singapore by the end of 2022.
Under the terms of this process, the regulator said that two equal spectrum packages will be put up for bidsamong the four existing mobile operators. IMDA stated that each lot of spectrum will cost at least 55 million Singapore dollars ($40.18 million).
IMDA will assess the operators’ proposals based on a comprehensive set of criteria, including network security design, network performance and spectrum offer price. The two selected operators will be required to deploy the 3.5 GHz spectrum band on a standalone basis.
The two remaining operators will receive two 800 MHz lots of mmWave spectrum. The operators securing spectrum in the 800 MHz band will have the flexibility to deploy mmWave spectrum on a non-standalone basis to deliver localized 5G services.
Local carrier TPG Telecom announced a partnership with ST Engineering and its JV company SPTel to develop 5G enterprise use cases for the following strategic clusters: airports, maritime, smart estates and public sector.
ST Engineering’s main areas of expertise includes artificial intelligence, IoT, analytics, robotics and edge computing.
Under this partnership, SPTel will extend its intelligent network capabilities, including the provision of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) nodes, to enable the 5G use cases.
Richard Tan, Managing Director and Acting CEO, TPG Telecom said: “Our partnership with ST Engineering will accelerate the adoption of 5G in Singapore. 5G is many times faster than 4G with lower latencies, enabling many new applications such as industry automation, autonomous vehicles, remote robotics, augmented and virtual reality, and event live streaming. The agreement also allows TPG to leverage SPTel’s resilient fiber network for network diversity and pervasive hubs around the island as locations for our 5G base stations.”
“This partnership leverages the strength of all three parties to drive 5G use cases that solve real-world problems and provide sustainable solutions for enterprises. I am confident that collectively, we will drive the development of the 5G ecosystem in Singapore to better support industry transformation and digitalization,” said Ravinder Singh, president for electronics at ST Engineering.
