AT&T announced that it is expanding its pre-standards 5G trials to include three new U.S. cities by the end of the year, as part of initiative to accelerate commercial deployment as early as late 2018.
The Operator which is currently conducting similar trials in Austin, will extend them to Waco, Texas; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and South Bend, Indiana.
For the trials, AT&T will leverage Ericsson's 28GHz radios, virtualised RAN (vRAN) and full 5G virtualised core; Intel's 5G mobile trial platform; Samsung's 5G router, 5G RFIC chipset, virtualised core, and vRAN; and Nokia's 5G equipment and solutions.
AT&T said it has cloacked speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second and latency rates well under 10 milliseconds for the radio link at customer trial locations in Austin. In the Austin apartment unit, AT&T set up a fixed wireless 5G home with various apps such as streaming DIRECTV NOW, 360-degree video, and international video calls running simultaneously on the same connection.
Marachel Knight, SVP, Wireless Network Architecture and Design, AT&T
Taking our fixed wireless 5G trials out of the lab and into the real world helps us learn important factors about mmWave and 5G. And in doing so, we’re learning how to better design our network for the future.
Joakim Sorelius, Head of Product Area Network System, Ericsson
Ericsson is providing an end to end solution that includes new 28GHz radios, virtualized RAN and a full 5G virtualized Core. By testing the technologies in the live commercial-like environment and trialing new 5G use cases together, we are able to gain valuable experience in preparation for commercial deployments based on 3GPP New Radio (NR) technology.
