As part of an international business summit, MegaFon demonstrated record mobile data exchange speeds in Russia. During the demonstration, the speed reached 4.94 Gbps.
MegaFon and Nokia came close to speeds of 5 Gbps and demonstrated the mobile internet of the future. The demonstration began by showing a video shot in 360° format in 8K Ultra HD definition (7680×4320 pixels) and sent over the mobile network at a speed of some 5 Gbps. The video was shown on the screen and viewers saw it through the eyes of the test participant, who was using a virtual reality headset. The demonstration used the commercially available Nokia AirFrame and AirScale range of equipment and the speed close to 5 GB/s achieved during the presentation means that a music file or film could be transferred in seconds. “Thanks to MegaFon’s infrastructure advantages, our company today offers extremely fast mobile internet speeds of up to 300 Mbps. We understand the importance of developing broadband data transfer technologies, which is why we are carrying out extensive research, which made it possible in June 2016 to achieve mobile internet speeds of 1.24 Gbps and today we quadrupled that speed. But aside from raising data transfer speeds and volumes, 5G will make it possible to reduce response time, connect billions of devices worldwide and roll out a whole range of innovative services, some of which were shown to the public today for the first time,” said MegaFon Network Development Director Andrey Grachev.
This year MegaFon and Nokia signed an agreement to cooperate on developing 5G technologies in Russia and today they presented the results of their joint work and a number of radically new technical solutions. At the stand they demonstrated the new capabilities of operations radio communication based on the Mission Critical Push-To-Talk solution, the commercial rollout of which is already available and complies with the specifications laid out by the international 3GPP consortium (Release 13). On the basis of eMBMS technology, which is part of the LTE standard, and complemented with an IMS core, the companies showed direct interaction between subscriber devices in individual and group calls and video communication. Full information security and confidentiality is ensured through encryption of the transferred data, including the possibility to record and store traffic and geo-positioning. The solution is designed for rapid response teams and could also be of interest to transport companies.
Apps for automating various production processes using robots communicating over radio with a new radio interface with short delays of less than 1 ms were presented for the first time in Russia. This will help the functioning of different Internet of Things (IoT) systems that need immediate responses, for example, autopilot, security and smart home and smart city systems, as well as a broad range of industrial sensors making it possible to remotely control important infrastructure facilities.
The stand also demonstrated innovative means of analyzing information at the edge of the cellular network (Mobile Edge Computing). This solution makes it possible to quickly roll out new services and optimize service provision processes through the use of different developers’ applications. By moving the processing of information to base stations, Mobile Edge Computing ensures that the delay is extremely short, performance is high and there is less load on the operator’s backhaul network. This technology can be used to provide clients with unique apps.
“5G networks will very soon be part of our daily lives, be it driving, production automation and robotics or telemedicine. We are pleased to already be able to demonstrate the first results of our joint work under the agreement signed earlier in 2016 to partner on developing 5G and IoT technologies in Russia by demonstrating, together with MegaFon, future 5G use cases,” said Juha-Pekka Takala, Vice President and Head of the Eastern European Region at Nokia.
MegaFon traditionally pioneers the introduction of new mobile internet technologies. MegaFon was the first in Russia to launch a commercial 4G network, the first in the world to launch a commercial LTE-Advanced network with speeds up to 300 Gbps and was also the first in the country to demonstrate speeds faster than 450 MB/s. In June 2016, by aggregating frequency bands, MegaFon showcased speeds faster than 1 GB/s and today it beat all records by showing a speed of some 5 Gbps.