Japan’s SoftBank to boost orders for 5G-ready equipment from ZTE, Huawei
The Chinese firms will supply SoftBank as it embarks on an aggressive domestic roll-out of Massive Mimo, a key technology behind 5G
SoftBank Corp, the domestic telecommunications subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp, plans to raise its orders of advanced, 5G-ready mobile equipment from Chinese suppliers ZTE and Huawei Technologies under an aggressive nationwide infrastructure roll-out next year.
Shenzhen-based ZTE and Huawei helped SoftBank launch in September the world’s first commercial deployment of so-called Massive Mimo, a large-scale antenna system that represents one of the key technologies behind future 5G networks, in about 100 sites mostly located in Tokyo.
“We will increase the number of Massive Mimo sites to a few thousands nationwide by the end of next year,” Hidebumi Kitahara, the senior director for mobile network planning at SoftBank, said in an interview. “We’re working with both ZTE and Huawei to increase the capacity of our network.”
Kitahara pointed out that SoftBank was also collaborating with the two companies on the development and future deployment of second-generation Massive Mimo technology in Japan.
We’re working with both ZTE and Huawei to increase the capacity of our network
Such demand appears to show that infrastructure sales growth for Huawei, the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment supplier, and Hong Kong-listed ZTE would continue to remain strong, despite the anticipated gradual decline of 4G-related capital spending in their home market by China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
Kitahara said SoftBank is looking to be “very aggressive” in its nationwide programme to have “5G anywhere” by 2020, when Tokyo will host that year’s Summer Olympics.