5G is coming to Singapore this year, albeit in a limited form.
The country’s main telco Singtel will be putting a 5G network on trial with drones and autonomous vehicles in a partnership with Ericsson, the two companies announced on Monday in a joint press release.
Situated in Singapore’s science and IT hub called one-north, the 5G pilot network will be launched by the fourth quarter of this year. The network will run on Ericsson’s 3GPP standards-compliant 5G technology, with the airwaves allocated by the Info-Communications Development Authority (IMDA).
The 5G pilot network, touted to be the first in the country by the two companies, will enable speeds ten times the current 4G rates, with 4K videos and terabytes of data able to be transmitted in seconds, the two companies claim.
The two companies are also planning drone and autonomous vehicles trials on the 5G network at designated areas other than one-north later this year.
Singtel also said that the initiative inviting other enterprises to collaborate in the initiative to tap the business potential of 5G and use the pilot network to develop new 5G use cases.
This is not the first time that Singtel has collaborated with Ericsson on rolling out 5G network in Singapore. In 2016, the two companies had trialled live-streaming over 5G network.
Other telcos in Singapore have also been working on 5G trials recently.
Rival M1 conducted just in late June a 5G small cell trial with Nokia for low capacity IOT devices, and also a 360 VR live-broadcast over a 5G network in partnership with Huawei around the same period.
Another of Singapore’s main telcos, Starhub, is also planning for 5G trials that will cover robotics and logistics by the end of this year, according to local media Channel News Asia.