Huawei today announced the launch of its end-to-end user trial for Wireless to the Home 5G service using a specially-designed 5G Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) unit.
The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in North America, and among the first globally.
According to Ibrahim Gedeon, CTO at TELUS, the trial represents continued progress toward the launch of 5G, as they start to replicate both the in-home experience and network footprint.
Wireless 5G services Huawei says, 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.
The current trial is being conducted in the homes of Vancouver-based TELUS employees and is based on the successful 5G 3GPP mmWave tests that TELUS and Huawei conducted in June 2017.
The 5G wireless trial system provides users with a fibre-like experience with their home network.
In addition to the unique 5G in-home equipment, the network utilizes the 5G gNodeB and related elements built as part of the TELUS/Huawei 5G Living Lab.
The trial system they say, operates on the 28GHz mmwave band with 800 MHz of bandwidth and includes many 3GPP key technologies, such as Massive MIMO, F-OFDM, and Polar Code.
5G-capable wireless solutions have the potential to complement fibre to the home solutions by providing an alternative last-mile solution for consumer and business services.
However, in both urban and suburban regions, the ability to deploy 5G wireless solutions will help reduce costs for operators and increase accessibility of 5G for end customers.
5G networking equipment also requires a much smaller footprint than traditional mobile networks, reducing requirements for government approvals of new tower locations.
The first trials were initiated on December 4th, 2017 and the initial application has successfully achieved single-user download speeds of over 2 Gbps.
Dr. Wen Tong, Huawei Fellow says, “This friendly user trial will drive the global 3GPP unified 5G standard and build a solid foundation for the 5G early commercialization.”
