Singaporean mobile carrier M1 has announced that it will be trialling 5G small cells in partnership with Nokia at the end of this year.
The trials will take place across M1's 4.5G narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) heterogeneous network[1] (HetNet) in Singapore, which was rolled out using Nokia's Flexi Zone Wi-Fi equipment and small cells and was labelled a precursor for 5G.
According to M1, the companies will use the tests to inform how to commercially deploy 5G small cells in a "dense cell grid architecture" at high-frequency spectrum bands, as well as to demonstrate low-latency 5G IoT use cases.
"The practical learning from early 5G field trial is critical for the success of developing high-performance and demand-driven 5G services for our customers in future and enables us to play a key role in Singapore's Smart Nation initiatives," M1 CTO Denis Seek said.
M1 had first partnered with Nokia on 5G[2] network trials back in October 2016, displaying 1ms latency in a robotics demonstration.
The telco last week also announced that it is working with Chinese networking giant Huawei to complete an end-to-end live broadcast of virtual reality (VR) content over a 5G network[3].
The trial with Huawei, which will make use of the 28GHz millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum band, will take place at the end of June in M1's MiWorld building in Jurong. It constitutes the first live end-to-end 5G trial of Huawei's equipment in Singapore in that frequency band, the companies said.
Huawei International CEO Lei Hui said the company would "continue to invest heavily in the research and development of 5G key technologies and products, cooperate with global industry partners, and promote the