Wednesday, November 15th, 2017 (11:37 am) - Score 5,455

Mobile operator EE (BT) and Huawei have conducted their first UK lab test of an end-to-end 5G network, which delivered a consistent download speed of 2.8Gbps (Gigabits per second) using an active antenna unit with 64×64 MIMO broadcasting via the 3.5GHz radio spectrum band.

In order to deliver a consistent 2.8Gbps downlink throughput across the end-to-end 5G architecture, EE linked their fully virtualised 5G core network to 100MHz of the 3.5GHz band via Huawei ‘s latest proof-of-concept 5G baseband unit. This also produced sub 5ms (millisecond) latency times.

However it’s worth remembering that lab tests don’t reflect the reality of a real-world environment, where interference, distance, end-user hardware and other subscribers can all conspire to reduce the service performance. Nevertheless it does represent some very positive progress.

Tom Bennett, EE’s Director of Network Services & Devices, said: “We’re using our experience in cutting edge 4G technologies and our dedicated partnership approach to ensure technology leadership in 5G. The network architecture we’ve proven today is a huge step forward, and will drive our ambitious rollout timetable to be first for 5G.”

Apparently EE’s current 5G architecture is aligned to Option 3 of 3GPP Release 15 standard, which is due to be finalised next month and formally ratified in April 2018. The first commercial deployments aren’t due to begin until 2020 and that’s assuming that Ofcom can resolve all of the current legal challenges over their related auctions (example), which involve similar spectrum bands to the one used above.

Now all we need are some strong data allowances to help make all of this extra speed worthwhile.