MTN Chief Technical Officer, Giovanni Chiarelli
by SAVIOUS KWINIKA
JOHANNESBURG – MTN South Africa has for the first time deployed a trial 5G network in an indoor business environment, amid the company decrying the lack of appropriate spectrum hindering the commercial launch of such services.
The live 5G indoor solution at Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit and International Convention Centre has been launched at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit and International Convention Centre north of Johannesburg.
This joint project between MTN SA and Kyalami will enable collective evaluation regarding the benefits that 5G connectivity can provide to corporate customers, while laying the foundation to test more advanced 5G use cases.
The 5G indoor solution consists of an end-to-end dedicated 5G network operating in 100MHz of 28GHz licensed spectrum and achieves downlink throughputs exceeding 630Mbps and uplink throughputs exceeding 130 megabits per second (Mbps).
The 5G solution includes a 5G Router to enable Kyalami employees and conference attendees to access the fibre-like 5G service via Wi-Fi connectivity on their mobile devices during the test period.
Once 5G mobile terminals are commercially released by the handset OEMs, the same 5G indoor solution will be capable of supplying connectivity directly to those devices.
Giovanni Chiarelli, Chief Technology and Information Officer at MTN SA, said the company was working with a number of partners to identify more 5G use cases and applications for the digital transformation of their industries.
He said the most significant challenge preventing MTN from commercially launching 5G services was the lack of appropriate 5G spectrum.
“However, despite this lack of licensed 5G spectrum, MTN has continued to pioneer the use of 5G technology within the country, so that when such spectrum is made available, then MTN will be in an ideal position to begin supporting 5G use cases in a variety of environments and industries,” Chiarelli added.
5G (5th generation) is the latest generation of cellular mobile communications.
It succeeds the 4G (LTE-A, WiMax), 3G (UMTS, LTE) and 2G (GSM) systems.
5G performance targets high data rate, reduced latency, energy saving, cost
reduction, higher system capacity and massive device connectivity.
– CAJ News
