Vodafone Spain has 11 5G NR base station sites on trial in Barcelona providing signal over the 3.7GHz band. The equipment, provided by Huawei, has been providing a peak rate to test users and devices of around 1.7Gbps and average rates of around or just below the 1Gbps mark. It has been able to uplink video from a 4k camera as a car drives around testing things out.
Attendees at an event being run by Huawei deep inside the W, a modern building made of plenty of reinforced glass, were witness to a call between two new Huawei Mate X 5G devices – one inside the building and an employee standing outside the hotel. The NSA set-up meant that the devices were anchored over LTE – but Huawei took pains to show us the 5G indicator light up on the phones notification panel.
OK – so a phone call or data session should work OK, but it’s a new radio interface, new phones, and shows the benefits of M-MIMO beam forming getting that mid band signal fairly deep inside a modern glass building. A notable proof point.
