HUAWEI and DOCOMO conduct word's first large scale 5G field trial

Huawei and NTT DOCOMO, a Japanese telecommunications provider, have successfully completed the world’s first large-scale 5G field trial in the 4.5 GHz frequency band.

During the trial, conducted in Yokohama, Japan, a total user throughput of 11.29 Gbps and less than 0.5-millisecond one-way user plane latency were achieved in the “macro cell coverage of a real urban application scenario”.

The test was made up of “a base station that works in the 4.5 GHz band with 200 MHz bandwidth, 64 TRXs and 23 UEs of both static and mobile types,” explained HUAWEI. The 0.5-millisecond latency achieved is about one tenth of that seen on LTE.

HUAWEI said that this was a “leading-edge breakthrough of foundational importance” in shaping the future of the 5G network, while Mr Takehiro Nakamura, Vice President and Managing Director of NTT DOCOMO’s 5G Laboratory said the trial’s success had “brought the whole industry one step closer to 5G commercialization by 2020.”

Yesterday, US carrier AT&T urged regulators to finalize the initial 5G standards by December 2017 instead of the planned June 2018 launch, stating it wanted to “make sure the results of our trials get into the standards.” AT&T expects to release early market deployments of 5G services by 2019.

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