Taiwan’s Asia Pacific Telecom (APT) has launched what is claimed to be the country’s first TD-LTE network operating at 2.6GHz, using Airspan’s AirUnity indoor small cell to do so. In a press release regarding the development, APT’s chief technical officer CP Chen was cited as saying: ‘We are excited to announce our partnership with Airspan for the deployment of their industry leading AirUnity small cells, we are delighted with the transformational benefits that this product has already delivered throughout our network.’
As a result of its deployment, APT will reportedly be able to provide ‘a rapid cost-effective network across Taiwan’s shopping areas, night markets, and other high-density areas, resulting in greatly improved indoor coverage and capacity’. AirUnity uses the Qualcomm FSM chipset and Airspan’s Zero-touch AirSON, which automatically configures wireless-backhaul and optimises the system and network using advanced interference mitigation techniques to avoid previous high-density small cell interference issues and greatly reduce operational costs. Meanwhile, it has been suggested that the technology rollout will enable APT to provide an advanced, high-performance 4G network, while also allowing the operator to lay the foundation for future 5G services.