The Philippines' Globe Telecom has commenced a trial of Huawei's commercial FDD Massive MIMO product.
Huawei says its offering is the world's first commercial FDD Massive MIMO product, and has the potential to boost cell capacity by a factor of two to three times on legacy terminals.
Globe has been experiencing rapid growth in mobile data traffic since the company started building its LTE networks in 2013. The company is looking to adopt Massive MIMO technology to enhance its network capacity without adding additional spectrum resources.
“We are committed to provide users with high-quality and high-speed connectivity to support their digital lifestyle. Video and rich multimedia content is driving the growth in data demand and the need for a better customer experience,” Globe chief technical advisor Robert Tan said.
“Massive MIMO utilizes spectrum more efficiently and enables us to deliver superior customer experience with a tremendous boost in data capacity to support the exponential growth in wireless data consumption from our increasing base of MBB and WTTx customers.”
He added that the expected deployment will serve as a natural evolution of Globe's network towards the 5G era.
Other major APAC operators including China Unicom, Hong Kong's SmarTone and Indonesia's Telkomsel have also held pre-commercial trials of FDD Massive MIMO technology.