Samsung Electronics Australia has announced that it collaborated with TPG Telecom and has completed its first 5G virtualized RAN (vRAN) trial on 26GHz frequency. This operation will now further enable Samsung Networks and TPG to provide their customers "access to competitive connection speeds for 5G".
Vice President, Mobile Division, Samsung Electronics Australia, Garry McGregor stated:
This is a significant step forward for the Samsung Networks business in Australia, towards realising the full potential of 5G and reshaping the value of mobile experiences for users and enterprises alike. The goal of this trial was to test the capabilities of Samsung’s 5G solutions, including its cutting-edge 5G vRAN, in a range of settings. We have now successfully achieved that, which presents us with the exciting opportunity of continuing to elevate and support 5G network infrastructure in this country. Successfully deploying and conducting the trial even with the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, were a real achievement and show the commitment from both TPG and Samsung to delivering best in class 5G infrastructure.
The initial trial was first announced in July and carried out on a cluster of sites connected to Samsung's virtualized Core at Innovation Lab and field of TPG Telecom, with Samsung's 5G solutions such as vRAN and Compact Macro, its latest integrated mmWave product. This compact solution integrates a baseband, radio, and antenna in a single form factor and can be easily established for the expansion of 5G networks.
TPG and Samsung, through this trial, have also assessed different situations built to imitate the real-life user experience when connected to the 5G network of TPG Telecom, employing 5G solutions provided by Samsung.
Executive General Manager Mobile and Fixed Networks of TPG Telecom, Barry Kezik stated:
By combining our spectrum assets with smart engineering, we are able to achieve far greater spectral efficiency than what we have seen from others in the industry. This is a great result and shows that innovative engineering and smart network design can help extend our reach, while also delivering great speeds and an excellent experience for customers.
The trial also managed to achieve speeds with a peak user throughput of 2.3Gbps employing 400MHz of spectrum on 26GHz and exhibited over 4Gbps in cell throughput with Multi-User, Multi-Input, Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) technology of Samsung. It resulted in a steady rate above 1Gbps throughput in non-line-of-sight scenarios around 1Km away as well.
