Telecommunications group MTN South Africa and information and communications technology company Huawei have jointly deployed a commercial spectrum-sharing solution.
CloudAir 2.0 will share spectrum between second-generation, third-generation, fourth-generation and narrow broadband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) radio technologies within the 900 MHz spectrum band.
Through a joint innovation programme, launched in 2017 to research and trial innovative technologies in MTN South Africa’s network, the parties developed the spectrum cloudification sharing capabilities to enable MTN to more efficiently use its limited 900 MHz spectrum allocation.
Huawei’s CloudAir 2.0 also achieves a 45% increase in long-term evolution (LTE) throughput within the band.
“This solution can allocate and adjust spectrum resources according to the changes of mobile traffic and avoid legacy radio access technologies from occupying prime spectrum, thereby improving spectral efficiency,” explained Huawei wireless network product line president Edward Deng.
“Spectrum is an extremely precious asset. This new network optimisation technique improves spectral efficiency and gives MTN the ability to deploy LTE within the same 900 MHz band alongside Global System for Mobile communication, Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service and NB-IoT, while significantly improving LTE coverage and user experience,” concluded MTN South Africa chief technology and information officer Giovanni Chiarelli.