Vodafone Australia to roll out Massive MIMO from 2018

Vodafone Australia has joined rival Optus is testing massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology, and plans to start rolling it out from 2018.

The operator announced a recent successful trial of Massive MIMO in the 1800-MHz FDD band.

The trial, conducted with Huawei in a suburb of Sydney, used 20 MHz of 1800-MHz spectrum to achieve a peak cell throughput of 717Mbps across eight simultaneous devices.

Vodafone revealed plans to roll out its FDD Massive MIMO technology to selected mobile sites during 2018.

“This week’s demonstration is another significant step towards 5G, following our live 5G trial last year which saw speeds of up to 5Gbps,” Vodafone GM of technology strategy Easwaren Siva said.

“When it is rolled out in an area, FDD Massive MIMO will give the Vodafone network multiple-fold increase in capacity, delivering a consistently high quality network experience, even in times of high usage.”

Rival Optus last week announced plans to start rolling out Massive MIMO on its mobile network at the end of the year, after completing trials in June that combined Massive MIMO with three carrier aggregation. This trial was also conducted with Huawei.