Samsung expects that in the coming years, an additional 15 nations will launch 5G mmWave services
Samsung claimed that it achieved the fastest 5G speeds seen by the industry in a lab demonstration that combined 800 megahertz of millimeter-wave spectrum with MU-MIMO (Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) technology, running on the Samsung 5G mmWave Access Unit.
The demonstration used two test mobile devices, reaching approximately 4.3 Gbps speeds on each, and an industry peak speed of 8.5 Gbps across both devices. The company used carrier aggregation and MU-MIMO, two key technologies when it comes to improved data transfer speeds.
In the company’s announcement of the results, Samsung states that its demonstration highlights that the use of mmWave spectrum is truly what sets 5G apart from previous generations of cellular technology due to mmWave’s wide bandwidth that provides multi-gigabit speeds that lower band spectrums are unable to match.
“Samsung will continue to be at the forefront in advancing 5G mmWave technology,” commented Hyunho Park, senior vice president, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This successful demonstration proves mmWave’s potential to deliver new kinds of business use cases and open up opportunities for mobile operators. We look forward to building on this significant technical breakthrough to fuel our continued journey towards an innovative and vibrant mmWave ecosystem.”
Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are among the small number of countries that have already allocated mmWave spectrum, and according to Samsung, it is expected that in the coming years, an additional 15 nations will follow suit.
In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission has held three mmWave spectrum auctions, with the most recent auction of 47 GHz and 37-39 GHz spectrum being completed in January 2020 and raising more than $7 billion. AT&T won 3,267 licenses in 411 regions across the country, bidding about $2.38 billion; Verizon won 4,940 licenses across 411 PEAs after bidding about $3.4 billion; T-Mobile US walked away with 2,384 licenses in 399 PEAs after bidding about $931 million.
