Tigo Colombia has confirmed that it has commenced a 5G pilot in Medellin, in association with Finnish vendor Nokia. The trial is utilising 3.5GHz spectrum, in line with a temporary spectrum grant from the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications (Ministerio de Tecnologias de la Informacion y las Comunicaciones, MinTIC). According to local press reports, the pilot is taking place at the Ruta N innovation centre – itself a joint venture between the mayor’s office of Medellin and Tigo’s Une EPM fixed line subsidiary.
In a parallel development, Tigo has confirmed that it successfully deployed 2,000 700MHz antennas between April and November and is on target to end the year with 2,300 700MHz cell sites in service. In December 2019 Tigo acquired 40MHz in the 700MHz band during MinTIC’s multi-band spectrum auction.