Claro Colombia and Finnish telecoms vendor Nokia staged what they describe as a ‘5G’ trial on 17 January, achieving downlink transmission speeds of up to 10Gbps. According to local press reports, the tests also involved the use robots and virtual reality applications. While the companies have not yet suggested a timeline for the commercial deployment of 5G technology in Colombia, they expect to launch ‘4.5G’ services in the second half of 2018.
TeleGeography notes that Claro already offers what it terms ‘4.5G’ connectivity in neighbouring Brazil; the solution utilises 4×4 Massive MIMO technology alongside 256QAM functionality, and leverages tri-band carrier aggregation (3C).