Ericsson, América Móvil to test 5G in Brazil

Swedish telecoms equipment supplier Ericsson has reached an agreement with América Móvil to test the first 5G systems in Brazil in 2016 with the aim of supporting the country's digital agenda.

The announcement was made following the visit of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to Ericsson's headquarters in Sweden on Monday.

5G technology is expected to see its first commercial deployments in 2020. It is intended to encompass the internet of things (IoT) with greater capacity.

Ericsson's 5G test system allows telecom operators and ecosystem partners such as academic institutions, healthcare, energy and agriculture players to test 5G capabilities in a live network.

Ericsson and América Móvil will also deploy a test system for IoT, focusing specifically on low battery consumption applications, such as low power sensors for remote areas.

"For 5G, our focus is to understand how the systems will be used by both society and industries. To be ready with complete commercial networks in 2020," Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg said.

In addition to the previously announced 5G radio research with the federal university of Ceará (UFC), Ericsson announced additional programs with the university of São Paulo (USP) and university of Campinas (UNICAMP) to be conducted in 2017.

With USP and UNICAMP, Ericsson will test Cyber-Physical Systems, which are networks that communicate without human input, relaying information to road authorities and weather systems.

With the UFC, Ericsson will test MiMo, which combines multiple antennas to increase wireless capacity. Intelligent radio resource allocation (D2D) technology will also be tested to enable higher bit rates.

A delegation of Ericsson executives including Vestberg met with operators in Brazil earlier this month. Arun Bansal, global head of Ericsson's radio unit, told BNamericas that operators are interested in four things: carrier aggregation, improved indoor coverage, building network capability for IoT and preparing networks for 5G.

On October 9, Chilean telco Entel announced an agreement with Ericsson to expand the portfolio of OSS/BSS services, which will be essential to address the operators' increasing network complexity.