Optus and Huawei beat Telstra and Vodafone 5G trial in Australia

Optus and Huawei have successfully completed the 5G trial in Australia as part of the 5G collaboration agreement between Optus' parent company, Singtel, and Huawei. The companies have conducted a single-user transmission speed of 35 gigabits per second using millimetre wave frequencies in the 73 GHz band. They claimed that the trial has demonstrated the fastest speeds of a single user transmission over 5G, beating Telstra and Vodafone.

Telstra and Ericsson’s 5G trial in September employed 800MHz of spectrum in the 15GHz band delivering 10Gbps data streams to two end user devices. In October, Vodafone and Nokia also staged a 5G trial that leveraged spectrum in the 4.5 GHz band.

"Australia is well positioned to take a pioneering role in the development of 5G technologies globally,” Dennis Wong, Optus Networks acting managing director, said in a statement.

“We believe Optus, as one of the Australasia’s leading telecommunications and entertainment providers has the partnerships and the expertise to take a leadership position.".

The trial aimed to explore spectrum efficiency at millimetre wave frequencies above 30GHz using the Polar Code mechanism. Optus claimed that exploring the spectrum efficiency in a frequency above 30Ghz is the key to realising the promise of 5G networks.

“The possibilities with 5G are endless. Through our strategic partnership with Huawei we are undertaking the necessary preparation, testing and trials to tackle the 5G opportunity head on,” Wong said.

In 2014, Singtel and Huawei signed a memorandum of understanding for the joint innovation program of the 5G technology. The companies have already collaborated on other projects including the implementation of Cloud Baseband technology that boosted peak speeds through inter-site carrier aggregation at the AFL Grand Final.

In 2017, Optus plans to deploy Coordinated Heterogeneous Network and trial Massive MIMO technology.

“Optus and Huawei have taken a significant step forward with achieving the highest downlink peak rate in Australia as of today and we see this embarks a new mobile broadband era for us," Yan Jun, managing director of Huawei’s Carrier Business Group, said in a statement.