Telkomsel in partnership launched 4.5G LTE network in nine cities, including the country’s capital city Jakarta and also Medan, Bandung, Denpasar, Mataram, Pontianak, Makassar, Manado and Ambon.
Calling it as 'Pre5G' networks, the Operator used 20 Mhz commercial spectrum in Band 3 to achieve a single-user peak downlink rate of 398 Mbps, which is 2.6 times higher than the current network rate.
The deployment of 'Pre5G' networks in Makassar, the capital of Sulawesi, and Manado, a popular tourist destination was done togather with ZTE. Telkomsel's network in Sulawesi is built exclusively by ZTE, involving more than 8 million mobile users and over 10,000 logical sites. The successful launch of the commercial 'Pre5G' network indicates that Telkomsel have taken a solid step forward in the network modernisation process which leads the way to 5G, said ZTE.
From 2017 onwards, ZTE and Telkomsel aim to deploy commercial 'Pre5G' networks in more cities, aiming to greatly enhance user experience and network capacity by using key 'Pre5G' Giga+ MBB technologies, such as 4 × 4 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), as well as flexible X-Site networking.
Ali Imran, Telkomsel's VP
Telkomsel is always committed to 4G network performance improvement and network evolution, as to provide higher-quality mobile broadband (MBB) networks for users nationwide.
Liang Weiqi, manager of Indonesia Sales Office III at ZTE
ZTE's Pre5G technology will bring users a network rate higher than 1 Gbps, as well as new services and technologies, such as 4K HD video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and IoT, thus accelerating the network modernisation process in Indonesia.
