ZTE announced that it has partnered with Singtel to complete the live deployment of the 2.6 GHz Pre5G massive MIMO network at one Marina Bay site in Singapore to enhance Singtel's 4G user experience ahead of Singapore's National Day celebrations.
ZTE noted that its Pre5G massive MIMO is suitable for high-density scenarios and will be deployed to help guarantee service quality during the high data traffic volumes that will result from the crowd gathered at the location during Singapore National Day.
ZTE stated that after site commissioning, the Pre5G massive MIMO cell experienced a significant increase in throughput, shared the traffic volume of busy macro-station cells and enabled significantly improved network speed to user terminals, as well as an enhanced user experience and increased overall service throughput in the region.
Separately, Singtel announced plans to deploy massive MIMO technology on its commercial LTE-Advanced network and using recently acquired 2.5 GHz spectrum with the aim of enhancing data rates by up to 200% at special events for its customers.Singtel stated that it will team with Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE to deploy massive MIMO technology at the Marina Bay area, and will initially roll out the technology for the forthcoming National Day celebrations, with further deployments planned for the Singapore F1 Night Race and the New Year countdown event.
Singtel noted that it has identified massive MIMO as one solution to address growth in data traffic volume, and that it will specifically use massive MIMO base stations with an array of 64 antennas designed to improve spectral efficiency and cell capacity. The new antenna system channels signals to users' specific locations instead of broadcasting across a wide area, so multiplying the number of data paths from the base stations.
Singtel currently provides Singapore’s fastest national mobile data speeds of 450 Mbit/s, and recently launched 800 Mbit/s speeds in selected high-traffic locations.
