The vendor aims to commercially launch 5G technology in the Philippines in 2020
Chinese vendor Huawei and Philippines telco PLDT have signed an agreement to conduct joint research and development into 5G broadband wireless technology.
The two firms said that the goal of the framework agreement is to commercially launch 5G networks in the Asian nation by 2020.
Under the deal, PLDT and its mobile arm Smart Communications will work with Huawei to shape the strategic and commercial development of a new 5G ecosystem, while also identifying areas that need 5G technology, setting up an innovation laboratory and developing a showcase network.
“We are focused on ensuring that our current investments in network facilities will enable us to be ready with the necessary infrastructure foundation for 5G when it arrives sometime in 2020,” said Joachim Horn, CTO and information advisor for PLDT and Smart.
Smart initially launched commercial LTE services in September 2012. The telco currently offers the service through spectrum in the 700MHz, 850MHz, 1800MHz and 2.1GHz bands.
Huawei, Vodafone and Qualcomm create LAA-ready network in Turkey
In related news, Huawei, U.K telecoms group Vodafone and Qualcomm Technologies have worked together on a project in Turkey to create what they claim to be the world’s first network ready to use License Assisted Access (LAA) technology, based on the 3GPP R13 standard.
The vendor said that the introduction of LAA on mobile networks will help improve the user experience of consumers by enabling faster download speeds.
The LAA-ready network was tested using a Huawei Lampsite base station in Vodafone Turkey’s Arena Store in Istanbul. The network uses 40 megahertz of unlicensed spectrum in 5GHz and 15MHz licensed spectrum in 2.6GHz for three carrier aggregation. The on-site peak download speed of 370Mbps was achieved using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with X16 LTE mobile test device.
“LAA technology will help Vodafone to improve the experience our customers have. The LAA network fully reuses the existing core network, network management system and accounting system we use for 4G, and so will effectively improve our return on investment,” Santiago Tenorio, Head of Networks for Vodafone Group, said.
