The vendor believes Europe will see the initial commercial deployments of 5G in 2018 or 2019
Ericsson expects to see the initial commercial deployment of 5G technology in Europe in 2018 or 2019, international press reported, citing Arun Bansal, the vendor’s head of Market Area Europe & Latin America.
According to Bansal, the initial 5G launches in the European markets will be driven by industrial use cases including autonomous driving and healthcare.
Bansal also said he expects early 5G launches in the U.S. to focus on the provision of fixed-wireless access to the 38 million households which don’t have fiber to the home.
“And in Asia we’ll see 5G widely deployed thanks to consumer use cases,” added Bansal. The executive said that the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea and 2020 Olympics Games in Tokyo as events which will showcase the potential of augmented reality and VR over 5G networks.
Ericsson inks new deal with Chilean telco Entel to pave the way for 5G deployment
In related news, Ericsson announced the extension of a 20-year agreement with Chilean telco Entel.
Under the terms of the new agreement, Ericsson will prepare Entel’s network in the evolution path towards 5G by deploying its latest LTE FDD network technologies and LTE TDD Massive MIMO.
The vendor said that this new deal will allow the Chilean telco to become the first operator in Latin America to deploy Massive MIMO nationwide.
Massive MIMO is a wireless technology that uses multiple transmitters and receivers to transfer more data at the same time, Ericsson said. Multi-antenna transmission is playing a critical role in the evolution of 4G and 5G networks.
“Now, as we evolve our network to capture the new business opportunities of Gigabit LTE and the evolution towards 5G and IoT, we naturally extend this partnership with Ericsson in these areas,” Alfredo Parot, vice president of technologies and operations at Entel, said.
Ericsson said that the deployment of the core network projects will begin immediately and will be completed in different phases throughout 2018 and 2019.
