Claro said the 5G-A trial was carried out in partnership with Chinese vendor Huawei
Brazilian operator Claro has completed a test of 5G-Advanced (5G-A) in the country’s capital Brasilia, local press reported.
The trial, which was carried out in partnership with Chinese vendor Huawei, used a commercially active 5G antenna in Lago Sul and two mobile internet modems to aggregate the frequencies, since there are no commercially available cell phones with support for 5G-A. The equipment was provided by Huawei, which is also responsible for the software for the main core of the telco’s 5G Standalone (SA) network.
The report stated that Claro used 800 megahertz of millimeter frequencies together with frequencies already adopted in 5G, totaling 1,070 megahertz of aggregate bandwidth for data transmission. The operator’s proof of concept (PoC) allowed the network to reach a rate of 10.4 Gbps, which, according to Claro, corresponds to more than 10 times the peak recorded in conventional 5G.
“Technology evolves when we increase testing capacity and complexity. And that’s what we did in Brasília. We took the technology out of the four walls, out of the laboratory, and took 5G-A to the streets. There is certainly a long way to go in the evolution of 5G, in the use of frequencies, in the provision of equipment and in the market. But these are important results,” said Paulo Cesar Teixeira , CEO of Claro’s consumer and SME unit.
In addition to Claro, other Brazilian operators are in process to test 5.G-A technology. In February, TIM announced a laboratory test where it achieved speeds of 11.6 Gbps with its network, while Vivo completed a test in March during an employee convention, where it reached 6.7 Gbps.
Claro ended 2023 as the leader of 5G in Brazil, with 37.6% of the market, according to data released by local telecom regulator Anatel.
Last month, Finnish vendor Nokia said that the 3GPP recently concluded that the specification of Release 18 can be considered ready and stable to be “frozen.” This marks a major milestone for 5G-Advanced since now after three years of specification work, the handset manufacturers and network vendors can proceed to start selling 5G-Advanced compliant solutions to the market, Nokia said.
With the specification frozen, all players in the ecosystem can trust that potential future corrections in the specification will have no impact on the handsets that follow the June 2024 specifications, the Nordic vendor added.
