Ahead of the planned 5G trials that Telstra plans to run at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast next year, Telstra has announced they will run a demonstration of 5G technology using an Ericsson 5G testbed, ahead of an expected rollout of 5G in Australia in 2020.
Telstra expects the eventual implementation of 5G technologies to improve customers experience for video streaming, as well as looking further down the track to ‘remote medical procedure, self-drive cars, autonomous drones and further support the massive increase in IoT connected devices’. For businesses they expect industries such as mining, transport, and agriculture to see increased benefits when using it to ‘improve automation, process control, and monitoring’.
The demonstration will be tested in ‘real world environment(s)’ using worldwide standards they’ve been involved in developing over the last few years. The test will involve the use of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) transmission which transmits and receives signal from a user using multiple antennas.
Telstra will also be testing beam steering technology, which involves a specialised beam steering antenna array to track and direct a signal straight to you rather than as a general broadcast in all directions or by sector.
In terms of speeds, Telstra Networks Group Managing Director, Mike Wright said in the blog post announcing the trials
We also recently conducted 5G radio testing at Ericsson’s 5G experience centre with tests in the lab delivering download speeds of greater than 20Gbps. That’s the equivalent of downloading around 4,000 different HD movies all at the same time.
Part of the demonstration is to test in our unique Australian environment, which features a lot of remote, expansive open spaces where Telstra says even our eucalyptus trees and other unique Australian flora has to be taken into account.
We’ll hopefully see results of the demonstration in the near future, but in terms of real-world usage we’ll have to find some 5G capable devices to take advantage of it first.
Beam me up Scotty….
Beam me up Scotty.
20Gbps. Sceptical.
I`m not….if you’re the only person using that tower. They didn’t say how many people were using it and that’s what you’d get day-to-day. Demonstrations and trials are wonderful things to get theoretical benchmarks.
They probably shouldn’t call it the “5G experience centre”. Maybe the “5G ‘not-what-you-will’ experience centre”. 🙂
5G… Awesome… harnessing the power of 5G
I expect to see lightning and other weather phenomena during the demonstration!