Australian operator Optus has switched on its first six 5G mmWave commercial sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as the carrier reached 1 million 5G-capable devices on its network.
Optus said that its mmWave sites are equipped with 800 megahertz of spectrum. For Optus customers, this means that once mmWave commercial devices are available, they will benefit from the ultra-high capacity and speeds enabled by mmWave.
The new mmWave sites include four Sydney-based locations: Kings Cross, Surry Hills, North Ryde and Optus Sydney Campus, as well as Huntingdale in Melbourne and Strathpine in Brisbane.
The carrier also said it expects to add more 5G mmWave commercial sites in the coming weeks.
“The demand from our customers for 5G capable devices has surged in recent months, with eight out of 10 handsets that we sell today now 5G enabled. One million 5G devices is just the beginning for us and as we grow our 5G network and launch new capabilities we expect our 5G customer base to grow in parallel,” said Matt Williams, managing director of marketing and revenue at Optus. “Customers want and expect the latest tech when it comes to their network and at Optus we are committed to delivering this, which is why today we have also switched on our first six mmWave sites.”
Lambo Kanagaratnam, Managing Director Network at Optus said, “We’ve been testing mmWave for many months, harnessing and pushing its capabilities so that once commercial devices enter the market our customers will truly be able to benefit from the capacity and speeds that this incredible technology delivers. In fact, mmWave is set to blow current mobile and home internet speeds out of the water, with the potential for multi-gigabit speeds which is much faster than what Australians are used to getting today.”
In July 2020, Optus had announced it was testing 5G mmWave technology in partnership with Ericsson. In January 2020, Optus had successfully implemented spectrum sharing technology from Ericsson to made an end-to-end 5G video test call while simultaneously streaming video content on a 4G device. The Optus network was able to assign spectrum resources on both 4G and 5G switching between them in milliseconds to support the different service video demands from both users, Optus said. Dynamic Spectrum Sharing is a technology that allows an operator use the same spectrum at the same time for LTE and 5G, with the network base stations controlling the allocation of spectrum.
Last month, Finnish vendor Nokia and Optus claimed a record aggregate site throughput after hitting download rates of 10Gbps using 800MHz of mmWave spectrum at a live 5G site in Brisbane.
Nokia stated the demonstration employed its AirScale Radio equipment and showcased the capabilities of mmWave 5G technology.
Optus currently has more than 1200 5G sites, including six mmWave enabled sites.
