Australians are using Mobile Data in ever increasing quantities every year to share photos, watch streaming videos and listen to music.
In order to be able to improve mobile phone tower capacity and efficient mobile spectrum usage to cater for this ravenous demand, Australian mobile carriers Telstra, Optus and Vodafone have demonstrated 4.5/5G speed tests. However at present only Telstra and Optus have announced planned upgrades to their networks, first transitioning to 4.5G and then eventually 5G in a few years time.
I have recently started writing for Australian volunteer run award-winning independent community media outlet Ausdroid about events, new devices and other news that is relevant to Australian Android fans.
ITU release draft 5G IMT-2020 Minimum Technical Performance Requirements
The International Telcommunication Union (ITU) has released draft 5G IMT-2020 minimum technical performance requirements that aim to be “more flexible, reliable and secure … when providing diverse services in the intended three usage scenarios:
- enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB)
- ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC)
- massive machine type communications (mMTC)
These requirements are not intended to restrict the full range of capabilities or performance that 5G rollouts might achieve, nor are they intended to describe how they might perform in actual deployments under operating conditions.
read more of my article about new draft 5G standards
Optus Launches 4.5G Macquarie Park Sydney Test Site With Partner Huawei
Optus demonstrated a peak speed of 1.18636 Gbps (1186.36 Mbps) at their 4.5G Macquarie Park test site media launch event a few days ago. Optus expects the Next Generation Mobile Alliance to finalise official 5G standards within a year’s time.
Meanwhile Optus is laying the foundation for 5G by rolling out 4.5G (LTE Advanced Pro 3GPP) across Australia with their partner Huawei. First in selected capital cities and in the next twelve months reaching over 70% of the Optus network in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
Optus mobile customers with a new or recent device that doesn’t fully support 4.5G/5G will still enjoy the benefit of 4.5G enabled cell towers because of the more modern equipment and more efficient use of spectrum: enabling up to 4x increased cell site capacity, less congestion in crowded places and more reliable video streaming.
read more of my article about the Optus 4.5G Test Site in Macquarie Park, Sydney
Telstra details its Network of the Future in partnership with Ericsson; 5G strategy and Category-M1 IoT network
Telstra’s goal going forward is simple: build the best network in the world. As we look to the future, this is less straightforward than just building a larger pipe, and the company today made a good case for how it’s planning to support 5G and more with its Network of the Future.
Over three years, Ericsson will build out an expansion to Telstra’s long haul, regional and metro optical network and lay the foundations for massive future growth of the network, expanding capacity at key junctions in the network from today’s 100mbits looking to 1000mbits.
Telstra doesn’t just want to build a big pipe, though. Looking to the future, the company says its expecting to see 5x growth of data consumption across the network and this will be driven by a major expansion of media – specifically, video consumption. We already see this happening over current networks with the prevalence of video data carried into households on fixed networks and over mobile networks with the rise of Netflix in Australia and increasing usage of services like YouTube, to say nothig of Facebook’s increasing focus on video features.
To handle that growth, you need to be able to think smarter about the network. It’s no longer enough to just build a big pipe, the network needs to be smarter and know more about the data its carrying so it can provide the best experience for consumers. This might mean caching video chunks for longer to optimise delivery, or compressing data better for its target device. It needs to be able to grow and adapt to these needs and handle what’s being carried across it in best way possible.
read more of my Ausdroid team member Jason’s article about Telstra’s 5G Network of the Future
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