ATEME has announced that its advanced video compression technology is being used by Arqiva and Samsung Electronics to conduct the first field trial of 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) technology in the UK. The trial, first of its kind in Europe, is taking place from July to December 2017 in central London and involves the deployment of an end-to-end 5G FWA, operating in the 28GHz band. The trial objectives are to demonstrate the stability of 5G FWA and its market potential as a cost efficient and technological alternative to fiber for homes and businesses as well as its ability to foster new use cases outside of traditional smart device mobile connectivity.

For this event, Arqiva provides the infrastructure and mmWave spectrum required to operate Samsung’ 5G end to end system, which leverages advanced technologies such as beam-forming and virtualisation to achieve ultra-high-bandwidth connectivity between Samsung’s 5G Network and its Customer Premises Equipment.

On top of it, ATEME is assisting the trial by transcoding the 4K content in HDR with its TITAN software-based encoder-transcoder which delivers the highest video quality at lower bitrate. The trial has already demonstrated a stable two-way mmWave link with downlink speeds of around 1Gb per second at the CPE, allowing for the potential simultaneous streaming of more than 25 UHD 4K TV channels.

“Arqiva and Samsung’s trial is demonstrating the power of 5G to deliver gigabit speeds, in due course this will enable end users to access multiple 4K video streams along with a whole range of other high bandwidth content and applications. FWA is likely be the first incarnation of 5G technology that people will see and use and Arqiva is excited to be working with Samsung and ATEME to showcase the rapid progress being made in this area.” said Jonathan Freeman, product and technology director, telecoms & M2M, Arqiva.

Categories: Articles, Broadband, Satellite