Orange Poland’s CEO said operators need to know “the clear rules of the game” for buying 5G ready spectrum and setting up new networks.
Jean-François Fallacher was speaking as the operator and Huawei built the market’s first public 5G base station, as it looks to test next generation solutions in the wild.
The site is located in Gliwice, southern Poland, and will explore how 5G could work in urban conditions. It will operate in the 3.4-3.6GHz bands using Massive MIMO technology. A recent live trial saw speeds of 1.5GBps hit using a 100MHz chunk of spectrum, double Orange Poland’s top speed for LTE.
Fallacher said 5G would transform how operators manage their businesses. He said: “We’re coming outside of the laboratory to check how the prepared solutions work ‘in battle’. The tests carried out in Gliwice allow us to analyse how they function in real life urban conditions.
“The implementation of 5G will bring a qualitative change. It will not only benefit individual users, but also industry or, more broadly, the entire economy.
“In order to launch a new generation of mobile network efficiently and effectively, we need clear rules of the game, arranging matters such as frequencies, electromagnetic standards, or the investment process. We are looking forward to discussions with the government and telecom authority regarding the regulation of these issues.”
Earlier laboratory tests saw speeds of 1.8GBps achieved between a transmitter and Huawei modem.
Orange Poland is planning to launch 5G commercial services in 2020. It has already built a fibre network connecting more than 120 cities across the country.
Yesterday the operator held a series of trials in Belgium, attended by Group CEO Stéphane Richard. These included three connected robots having to balance a ball between them that was carried on a platform.