ZTE and Smartfren trial massive MIMO in Jakarta shopping mall

ZTE and Indonesian cellco Smartfren Telecom have successfully completed what they claim is Southeast Asia’s first field commercial trial of “Pre5G” massive MIMO technology.

At a press conference, Smartfren demonstrated massive MIMO at Teras Kota shopping mall in Jakarta. With the massive MIMO network deployed outside the mall, the user rate inside the mall was greatly improved from a few Mbps to more than 30 Mbps per user. Massive MIMO provides a single-cell user rate 4-6 times faster than a traditional macro base station. In an area with weak coverage, massive MIMO uses three-dimensional beamforming technology to improve single-user throughput by 6-10 times, greatly enhancing the cell-edge user experience.

“With the commercial demonstration of massive MIMO with our partner ZTE, we prepare the way to 5G and ensure that we are using the latest technology for the benefit of our customers,” said Smartfren CTO Christian Daigneault. We intend to use massive MIMO base stations to improve significantly the customer experience inside high buildings and shopping malls, as well as to augment capacity in areas of extremely high wireless users.”

Daigneault added that Smartfren can be first cellco in Indonesia to use massive MIMO because the technology is ideal for the 2300-MHz TDD frequency band that Smartfren uses.

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