Turkcell has pushed forward with its 5G plans in a live FDD Massive MIMO test that it claims boosted throughput fivefold compared to traditional LTE configurations.
The trial, the first of its kind in Turkey and which was held in Antalya in partnership with Huawei, achieved 480MBps using eight commercially available test terminals on 20MHz spectrum in the 1800MHz band with live network traffic.
Gediz Sezgin, Chief Network Officer responsible for Turkcell Network Technologies, said the test was preparing Turkcell’s network for 5G.
He said: “We continue to work intensively on our network in order to offer our customers the technology of the future. Thus, we aim to provide the best quality experience to our customers by offering the most innovative solutions.
“Massive MIMO, which will be an indispensable application when 5G comes into our lives, will allow customers using the internet at the same time in crowded environments to experience high speed internet without feeling this density.”
The collaboration follows previous tests by Turkcell and Huawei with TDD Massive MIMO in Ankara, which achieved a sixfold increase in throughput.
Turkcell signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei in May of this year, looking to double down on developing 4.5G and 5G technologies with the Chinese vendor. This includes exploring technologies for the Internet of Things and smart cities applications.
The two companies also signed a MoU in August 2016 to extend collaboration in 4.5G.
In April, Turkcell held a spectrum sharing demonstration with Huawei, which showed how GSM and UMTS could be combined to improve spectral efficiency by 20 percent.
Turkcell has invested strongly in 4.5G and claims that customers have responded strongly.