Huawei announces 5G trial in Vancouver

Chinese networking giant Huawei has unveiled an urban trial of 5G wireless-to-the-home (WttX) customer premises equipment (CPE) in Vancouver in partnership with Canadian carrier Telus.

The trials, which began in early December, are taking place in Huawei and Telus' 5G Living Lab and in the homes of Vancouver-based Telus staffers, using global 3GPP 5G standards as well as 28GHz millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum with 800MHz of bandwidth.

According to Huawei, the companies have attained download speeds of more than 2Gbps for single users.

The trials utilise 5G gNodeB elements in the lab, along with Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (Massive MIMO), filtered orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (F-OFDM), and the polar-coding mechanism.

"This trial represents continued progress toward the launch of 5G; as we start to replicate both the in-home experience and network footprint, we will see when 5G becomes commercially available in the near future," Telus CTO Ibrahim Gedeon said.

"Wireless 5G services will generate tremendous benefits for consumers, operators, governments, and more through the use of advanced IoT devices, big data applications, smart city systems, and other technologies of the future."

Huawei said its FttX solutions will decrease 5G costs for operators and increase 5G accessibility for customers by providing a last-mile alternative to fibre to the premises.

"mmWave technology will be an important tool in ensuring widespread deployment of 5G technology in Canada," Huawei Wireless CTO Dr Wen Tong said.

"Huawei's 5G solutions and terminals will enable 5G coverage over a neighbourhood or small community cost effectively, while providing more convenient and high-speed home broadband internet access services."

Following the standardisation of 5G NR specs in December, Huawei -- along with Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, AT&T, BT, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Fujitsu, KT Corporation, LG Electronics, LG Uplus, MediaTek, NEC Corporation, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Qualcomm, SK Telecom, Sony Mobile Communications, Sprint, TIM, Telefonica, Telia Company, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, Vodafone, and ZTE -- announced the beginning of the full-scale development of 5G NR including large-scale trials and commercial deployment.

At the time, president of Huawei's 5G product line Yang Chaobin said Phase 1 of the 3GPP 5G NR standardisation was completed "with great progress" thanks to collaboration between regulatory agencies, governments, research organisations, academia, and industry.

"Huawei will keep working with global partners to bring 5G into the period of large-scale global commercial deployment from 2018," he said.

Huawei had similarly undertaken 5G field trials with LG U+ in Gangnam District, Seoul in November to verify technologies including IPTV 4K video, dual connectivity, and inter-cell handover.

Calling it the world's first widescale 5G network test using a pre-commercial testing environment, the companies used a 5G "tour bus" to deliver 5G 4K IPTV, and used a virtual reality (VR) drone to demonstrate data rates of between 20Mbps and 100Mbps at the LG U+ headquarters.

Huawei also combined 5G CPE with the VR drone to demonstrate throughput of 1.5Gbps from 100m in altitude using the 3.5GHz spectrum band.

Huawei used both 3.5GHz and 28GHz base stations during the trials, attaining average speeds of 1Gbps on the low band and 5Gbps using dual connectivity across both the high and low bands.

In October, Huawei and LG U+ had announced completing dual-connectivity technology verification during a 5G trial in Seoul, providing 20Gbps downlink speeds by simultaneously linking two 5G base stations; while in November, Huawei additionally demonstrated separate uplink-downlink (UL/DL) decoupling technology across a 5G-LTE network deployment in London as part of its strategic partnership with BT and EE.

The EE trial network includes 5G New Radio (5G NR) and LTE co-site deployments, separating UL/DL onto different bands. According to Huawei, this improves coverage and capacity across the C-band by using 4G bands to carry 5G uplink data.

Huawei has been trialling 5G with carriers worldwide, in January last year attaining speeds of around 35Gbps with Singaporean telcos StarHub and M1.

Huawei is likewise helping Australian provider Optus roll out its 5G network for 2019, and is on the Australian government's 5G working group.

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