Telkomsel Indonesia Launches Pre5G Network with ZTE

ZTE Corporation, an international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, has partnered with Telkomsel for the commercial launch of its Pre5G networks.

As part of the deployment, it has done the commercial Pre5G networks in Makassar, capital of Sulawesi, and Manado, a famous tourist destination.

Using the 20 Mhz commercial spectrum in Band 3, these commercial networks have achieved a single-user peak downlink rate of 398 Mbps, which is 2.6 times higher than the current network rate. Media reporters and attendees experienced online playback and high-speed download of 4K HD video at the press conference.

Ali Imran, Telkomsel's VP, said at the press conference: "Telkomsel is always committed to 4G network performance improvement and network evolution, as to provide higher-quality mobile broadband (MBB) networks for users nationwide. As of now, we have made many joint efforts with ZTE to improve the network performance, which led to today’s successful launch of the commercial Pre5G networks."

Liang Weiqi, manager of Indonesia Sales Office III at ZTE, said, "ZTE established a partnership with Telkomsel in 2005, and helped Telkomsel become the first operator to deploy 4G networks in Indonesia. Today’s commercial launch of Telkomsel's Pre5G networks highlights ZTE’s commitment to helping Telkomsel build a leading network. In the era of M-ICT, ZTE's technologies are booming. ZTE's Pre5G technology will bring users a network rate higher than 1 Gbps, as well as new services and technologies, such as 4K HD video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and IoT, thus accelerating the network modernisation process in Indonesia."

Telkomsel's network in Sulawesi is built exclusively by ZTE, involving more than 8 million mobile users and over 10,000 logical sites. The successful launch of the commercial Pre5G network indicates that Telkomsel and ZTE have taken a solid step forward in the network modernisation process which leads the way to 5G. From 2017 onwards, ZTE and Telkomsel will deploy commercial Pre5G networks in more cities, aiming to greatly enhance user experience and network capacity by using key Pre5G Giga+ MBB technologies, such as 4 × 4 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), as well as flexible X-Site networking.