Vodafone has announced that its engineers in Spain have done successful tests of its future 5G services which have been tuned to the anticipated amount of 6 GHz spectrum band. It said that the download speeds reached 5 Gbps, double that which is available today.
While the 5 Gbps download speeds are impressive, you won’t get these indoors. It said that across a variety of indoor locations it achieved 2 Gbps download speeds, which is still good. This figure is important because three quarters of mobile traffic come from users situated indoors.
Vodafone expects that 6 GHz spectrum will become available in European countries over the next decade. It said that this test highlights that the band can be readily deployed at existing mobile sites ‘cost effectively and efficiently, providing a capacity boost when current bandwidth becomes exhausted.’
Discussing the prospect of a possible ‘major capacity crunch’ within five years when it comes to mobile, Alberto Ripepi, Vodafone Chief Network Officer, said:
‘Without a fair and balanced allocation of 6GHz spectrum, mobile users worldwide could face a major capacity crunch within just five years. Additional 5G spectrum would boost the digital transformation of businesses and public sector organisations, and support the European Commission’s ambition to have fast connectivity within reach of all populated areas by 2030.’
To avoid a crunch, Vodafone said that it’s presenting its findings before an important meeting next month at the World Radiocommunication Conference in Dubai. It said it will be calling for the upper 6 GHz spectrum band to be allocated to International Mobile Telecommunications, along with other mobile carriers, to help avoid a 5G capacity crunch as more devices come online.
Mobile carriers like Vodafone are having to fight for the upper 6 GHz spectrum band because there is a risk it will be given over for use by Wi-Fi services. Mobile carriers argue that Wi-Fi services were already assigned the lower part of the 6 Ghz spectrum and mobile carriers need to be able to use the upper portion to avoid capacity issues.
Source: Vodafone
2 Comments - Add comment