Huawei and Turkcell have signed a memorandum of understanding to extend their collaboration around 4.5G and 5G technologies.
The pair have agreed to “hunt for innovative business models and disruptive technologies to maintain their market leadership,” according to a statement.
Specifically, they will look to maximise Turkcell’s accelerating investment in 4.5G, paving the way for 5G. Turkcell posted record growth in the first half of 2016 as customers jumped at its new LTE services. The operator promised to accelerate investment in LTE Advanced and LTE Advanced Pro infrastructure through the second half of the year.
Turkcell Chef Executive Kaan Terzioğlu said: “Our 4.5G investments, including spectrum, position Turkcell well to move towards 5G. With this, Turkcell and Huawei further entrench their ongoing 5G R&D cooperation in this transitional phase. The global 5G discussion is increasingly evolving around ecosystem partnerships, and we are looking forward to further contributing to this evolution which we are already a part of.”
Meanwhile, Huawei has launched a new testing system for Base Transceiver Station (BTS) antenna, designed to help mobile operators construct next-generation networks. Its SG178 multi-probe spherical near-field testing system tests the radiating characteristics of BTS antenna.
BTS testing, in support of mobile broadband services, covers three distinctive systems: indoor far field test range, spherical near-field test range, and compact test range. Huawei said its SG178 spherical near-field systems doubles the test accuracy and improves efficiency compared with indoor far field and near field test range.
It also tests more antenna types and wider frequency bands, and is the only system to over-the-air tests of Massive MIMO systems, its maker said.
Zhou Taoyuan, President of Huawei’s Antenna Business Unit, said: “In order to help operators construct high quality mobile broadband networks that satisfy future network evolution requirements, Huawei is committed to providing best-performance future-oriented antenna solutions, which address the challenges they face in the imminent transition to a new era of mobile broadband and further assist operators to achieve commercial success.”
Huawei also offers multiple SG128 multi-probe spherical near-field test ranges, for passive and active antenna solutions, and a SG178 testing system, with 178 probes for higher sampling density, test accuracy and test efficiency.