Hutchison Telecommunications Hong Kong Holding’s mobile division 3 Hong Kong has teamed up with Huawei to upgrade its mobile network in preparation for the 5G era.
The operator is adopting five component carrier aggregation (5CC CA) using its extensive spectrum holdings across the 1800-MHz, 2100-MHz, 2300-MHz and 2600-MHz bands with both FDD and TDD technology.
Huawei will also upgrade the network to support 4×4 MIMO and 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) technology, to enable 3 Hong Kong to provide customers with data download speeds of over 1.2Gbps.
In addition to these 4.5G technologies, 3 Hong Kong has started planning for the deployment of 4G technologies based on network cloudification.
The partners have already deployed Huawei’s CloudEdge technology on the 3 Hong Kong core network and are now applying CloudRAN technology to the wireless access network. The operator also plans to adopt Huawei’s CloudAIR air interface cloud technology.
A Massive MIMO base station has also been built in Causeway Bay to conduct field tests of the 5G technology, and 3 Hong Kong plans to continue the deployment of Massive MIMO in key locations within the year.
“As we move towards the 5G and IoT era, 3 Hong Kong is actively deploying 5G technologies and upgrading its existing network architecture,” HTHKH executive director and CEO Cliff Woo Chiu-man said.
“In addition to using CA technology with 5CC, we have conducted research and carried out trials for various technologies, such as small cell installations, network cloudification, NFV and Massive MIMO towards the 5G era. These efforts will enable the timely launch of services to meet market demand as soon as the 5G standard and Hong Kong’s spectrum plans are confirmed.”