Telkomsel demonstrates FDD Massive MIMO

Indonesia’s Telkomsel has completed the market’s first FDD Massive MIMO demonstration as part of its 5G evolution roadmap.

The operator teamed up with Huawei to conduct the demonstration, which achieved five times the capacity of traditional FDD LTE 2×2 MIMO.

Since Telkomsel started building its network at the end of 2014, the operator’s LTE userbase has reached more than 19 million. The large number of concurrent users and Indonesia’s scarce spectrum resources will inevitably lead to network congestion in high-traffic areas, the companies said.

In anticipation of congestion issues, Telkomsel and Huawei have established a joint innovation center focused on the research of high-capacity pre-5G network solutions such as Massive MIMO.

“Telkomsel has always aimed to bring the best MBB experience to Indonesian users by leveraging on cutting edge technologies. Multi-antenna technology fully meets our requirements for improving  customer experience,” Telkomsel network director Sukardi Silalahi said.

“Massive MIMO can increase the capacity without adding sites and spectrum, thus reducing the cost per bit. I am very satisfied with the demonstration results today.”

He pledged to continue working with Huawei at the Joint Innovation Center to explore other network technology breakthroughs.