Swedish telecoms group Telia has appointed Ericsson as its sole supplier of microwave radio equipment for its operating company in Norway and demonstrated throughputs of 2.2GBps on via microwave links.
The deal is based on supply of Ericsson’s MINI-LINK microwave portfolio, which includes its latest MINI-LINK 6600 series. It covers expansion and upgrade of Telia’s transport network in Norway, through its deployment of next-generation 5G technology.
The pair has demonstrated the MINI-LINK 6000 platform on Telia’s live network in Oslo, Norway, achieving a throughput of 2.2Gbps over the microwave ‘hop’. The test used a 112MHz channel in the 38GHz frequency band, with 4096QAM in a 2+0 XPIC configuration. Ericsson called the trial a “world first”.
Jon Christian Hillestad, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Telia Norway, said: “Ericsson has through many years delivered a very stable radiolink platform for Telia Norway. With Ericsson’s latest innovation, Telia Norway is able to continue to support the increasing capacity demands from our customers with radio links.
“Innovation in this domain is very important on our journey towards 5G, where microwave transmission will play an important role. We are so far very pleased with the cooperation with Ericsson and look forward to continuing the journey.”
Telia and Ericsson completed a 5G trial on a live network in Kista, in Sweden, in October, achieving top-line peak rates of 15Gbps and latency of less than three milliseconds. The trial system used 800MHz of spectrum in the 15GHz band.
Ericsson is involved in a number of 5G trials and experiments across various continents.