MegaFon has demonstrated speeds of more than 1GBps through a mix of carrier aggregation and MIMO, as well as signed a data collection deal with Russia’s largest energy grid operator Rosseti.
The trial took place in St Petersburg and involved Huawei tower and radio equipment, as well as a prototype user terminal featuring a X16 LTE mobile modem.
The operator aggregated two 20MHz bands in its 2.6GHz holding with one 20MHz band at 1800MHz. It also used 256QAM modulation and 4×4 MIMO.
Acting MegaFon CEO Sergey Soldatenkov said: “The new 5G standard will make mobile even more affordable. Subscribers will get a lot more services for less money. Our company was the first in Russia to launch a 3G mobile network in 2008 and an LTE network in 2012. 5G is the next stage in mobile technology and offers a radically new level of service and capabilities for our customers.”
Meanwhile, MegaFon will install 300,000 monitoring and telemetry data collection systems at Rosseti Substations by 2020.
These systems will track the opening of doors and movement within Rosseti’s substations, automatically taking photos and video and sending them to MegaFon’s Global Network Operational Centre.
This data can then be sent onto Rosseti’s command centre in the event of an emergency. MegaFon said this data would help Rosseti improve security and prevent accidents.
Soldatenkov said: “Russian companies are actively implementing M2M technologies at their enterprises, optimising expenses, improving business processes and boosting business performance.
“In 2015 MegaFon increased the number of M2M SIM cards in service by 25 percent, resulting in two million devices being connected to our network. We implemented the Smart City project in Sochi and the Smart Auto Transport project with RTITS (RT-Invest Transport Systems) across Russia, and are now ready to implement a Smart Power project. We see this project as one of our top priorities and are ready to provide substation automation services and system maintenance.”