Swedish telecoms vendor Ericsson has confirmed that it plans to assist Japanese operator SoftBank with additional 5G Proof of Concept (PoC) activities. As such, the two companies are set to conduct a joint end-to-end trial of 5G technology in the 4.5GHz band in urban areas of Japan. Considered pre-commercial, Ericsson notes that it will be the first end-to-end 5G trial including two 5G New Radios, virtual RAN, virtual EPC, beamforming, Massive MIMO functionalities and test support services. The trial will start once SoftBank obtains an experimental licence from the regulatory authorities, Ericsson notes.
Previously, in March 2017 the two companies collaborated on the trial of 5G technology using 28GHz spectrum, while in 2016 they completed basic 5G trials using both the 15GHz and 4.5GHz spectrum bands.