Singtel had announced the launch of its 5G SA network in the country in May of 2021
Singaporean carrier Singtel’s 5G Standalone network currently covers over 95% of the country’s territory, the telco said in a release.
Singtel noted that the milestone comes more than three years ahead of the regulatory target for this level of coverage, which is at the end of 2025.
Singtel’s 5G SA network now covers more than 1,300 outdoor locations and over 400 building across Singapore.
“We’re extremely excited about this important milestone for both Singtel and Singapore as nationwide standalone 5G coverage is a major leap in technology that will spur unprecedented digitalization. Despite disruptions from COVID and the knock-on impact on manpower and resources, our planners and engineers managed to accelerate our 5G deployment, working through the pandemic to lay the groundwork and build a whole new infrastructure for a secure and resilient 5G network,” said Yuen Kuan Moon, Singtel’s group CEO.
To support the development of a number of public sector 5G use cases for the built environment, transport, and tourism industries, Singtel launched the 5G@Sentosa testbed last year, in partnership with multiple government agencies, including the Government Technology Agency and the Sentosa Development Corporation. Around 15 live trials are slated to be running by the end of this year, and at least 30 by the first half of 2023, the carrier said.
“Now that our nationwide 5G coverage is in place, we expect commercial adoption to accelerate. Our high speed, low latency 5G network with edge cloud and network slicing enables functions like real-time computing, data storage, data analytics and AI services at the edge – bringing to life more mission-critical enterprise applications than before, from automated quality inspection in factories, smart city planning, connected self-driving vehicles to supercharged IoT,” said Bill Chang, CEO of the group enterprise and regional data center business at Singtel.
Singtel announced the launch of its 5G SA network in the country in May of 2021. The carrier had partnered with Korean company Samsung to launch 5G SA network, which runs on 3.5 GHz spectrum.
Singtel had initially launched its 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) network in September of 2020, using spectrum in the 3.5 GHz frequency as well as existing 2.1 GHz spectrum.
The carrier also has said it is using 28 GHz mmWave spectrum, in addition to the 3.5 GHz and 2.1 GHz bands, to boost its 5G deployment in Singapore. Singtel has switched on mmWave in several locations across the island, including Orchard Road, the Padang area and Marina Bay Sands Expo.
In September last year, Swedish vendor Ericsson said it was powering Singtel’s 5G SA network with 5G radio access products and cloud-native, dual-mode 5G Core network solutions. The European vendor said its product range will deliver high-quality connectivity for outdoor coverage in densely populated areas and help drive strong indoor-mall coverage across the city-state.
