SmarTone and Ericsson start trial of Hong Kong’s first major 5G-ready mobile infrastructure

The two companies have started deploying the technology called Massive Mimo technology, a large-scale antenna system for mobile networks, that will form part of the upcoming 5G standard

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Stephen Chau Kam-Kun, chief technology officer at SmarTone, explains the mobile operator’s five-year network evolution plan for 5G with main equipment supplier Ericsson.

Published: 7:15pm, 30 Oct 2017Updated: 11:14pm, 30 Oct 2017

SmarTone Telecommunications has teamed up with Swedish equipment supplier Ericsson to become the first mobile network operator in Hong Kong to launch a major trial of 5G-ready infrastructure.

Senior executives at SmarTone, a subsidiary of Sun Hung Kai Properties, and Ericsson on Monday unveiled the ambitious initiative, which has initially targeted the city’s most densely populated districts.

The two companies have started deploying Ericsson’s iteration of the technology called Massive Mimo, large-scale antenna system for mobile networks, on the 1800-megahertz band of SmarTone’s frequency-division duplexing (FDD) 4G network operation.

Nishant Batra, the head of product area network infrastructure at Ericsson, said it marked the world’s first implementation of Massive Mimo” – a key technology of the upcoming universal 5G standard – on the 1800MHz band.

The milestone also shows how aggressive SmarTone is in its 5G preparations, compared with larger rivals HKT and Hutchison Telecommunications Hong Kong.

Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies, a large supplier of telecommunications network equipment to both HKT and Hutchison Telecom, offers its own Massive Mimo products around the world.

SmarTone has teamed up with Sweden’s Ericsson to install large-scale antenna systems called “Massive Mimo” (right) in Causeway Bay and other densely populated districts in Hong Kong. The roll-out marks the first major trial of 5G-ready infrastructure in the city by a mobile network operator. Photo: Bien Perez

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