The Dutch telco said massive MIMO delivered 600% capacity increase
Dutch operator T-Mobile Netherlands has activated massive MIMO technology, a key path to delivering increased bandwidth and setting the stage for 5G, in the city of Amsterdam. The first antenna was installed at Leidseplein Square, where the carrier said it observed a capacity increase of up to 600% was observed during the trial run.
T-Mobile is working with Huawei to optimize its mobile network, including the activation of this first massive MIMO site. The European telco said this antenna is completely integrated with the existing LTE Advanced Pro network.
“Demand for data is growing all the time and sudden huge increases in data demand are already occurring in busy locations. The current T-Mobile’s network is equipped to easily support this demand,” Richard Marijs, technology strategist at T-Mobile Netherlands, said.
“At the moment the focus is just on mobile Internet for consumers and business users and the T-Mobile network has more than enough capacity to satisfy this demand. However, in the near future 5G services are going to be added, combined with data traffic from self-driving cars, for instance, connected cameras used by law enforcement officers, smart city applications such as smart street lighting, and other internet of things applications. We are in the process of getting our network ready to for the optimal processing of all that data in order to keep busy cities livable for all their residents,” the executive added.
The massive MIMO antenna is fitted with 64 small receivers and 64 transmission antennas to send and receive various data streams with a single spectrum block of 20 megahertz in the 2600 MHz band using TDD-LTE technology.
T-Mobile said the antenna was activated early September and used for testing in which 16 users each achieved a simultaneous download speed of more than 35Mbps per handset on this single antenna. The tests were conducted with Huawei P9 handsets.
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