Road to 5G: Telkomsel, Huawei demo Indonesia’s first FDD Massive MIMO

Telkomsel has announced Indonesia’s first FDD Massive MIMO demonstration in collaboration with Huawei.

The demonstration achieved 5 times capacity of traditional FDD LTE 2x2 MIMO. As Massive MIMO is one of the key technologies of 5G, this successful demonstration realizes 5G-like experience in 4.5G network, and also marks 4.5G evolution, the beginning of 5G journey for Telkomsel 2017.

Massive MIMO result announcement from Telkomsel and Huawei

Telkomsel started building LTE network since the end of 2014. The number of LTE users have now reached more than 19 million. Telkomsel is consistently on top in terms of user experience as measured by active users for 12 consecutive months in 2016. With a large number of active LTE users, Indonesia users’ data demand grows quickly.

The heavy usage will inevitably lead to network congestion in high traffic areas. With scarce spectrum availability and challenging site acquisitions, solutions addressing capacity and efficiency of spectrum utilization is the most valuable for Telkomsel to address network congestions.

Telkomsel and Huawei set up a joint innovation center, for the research of large-capacity and evolution solution to 5G. Massive MIMO and other new technologies are proposed to enhance network capacity.

Sukardi Silalahi, Network Director of Telkomsel, said in the press conference, “Telkomsel has always aimed to bring the best MBB experience to Indonesian users by leveraging on cutting edge technologies. Multi-antenna technology fully meets our requirements for improving customer experience. Massive MIMO can increase the capacity without adding sites and spectrum, thus reducing the cost per bit. I am very satisfied with the demonstration results today. As a part of roadmap and road to 5G implementation in Telkomsel, we will continue to work with our partner Huawei at the Joint Innovation Center to explore other technical breakthroughs to continue improving our user experience and building best network.”

Sun Xiwei, Deputy CEO of PT. Huawei Tech. Investment, added “We are very delighted to collaborate with Telkomsel on this FDD Massive MIMO technology demonstration. Today’s result is a great breakthrough and will bring many benefits for Indonesian mobile data users. As a leading ICT solutions provider, Huawei have always invested heavily in R&D of cutting edge technologies that enriches communications and people’s lives. We live in an extremely fast paced and ever changing information era, the ever increasing demand for mobile data access will create strains on the mobile network due to system capacity limitations. Massive MIMO technology will help to increase system capacity for operators like Telkomsel. Huawei has invested heavily in the development of Massive MIMO technology as a key enabler for 4.5G and 5G and will continue to lead this development.”