Finally in the news for other reasons than its part in the bid for Oi’s mobile divison is operator Claro Brasil, which has offered more details on its plans to bring the first 5G network to Latin America by using Ericsson Spectrum Sharing.
As we noted early last month, this is another case of an operator taking advantage of existing spectrum assets rather than the auction of 5G spectrum (which has yet to happen in Brazil).
The 5G services are being rolled out initially across 12 areas in Brazil in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro though no precise dates for widespread commercial availability in these areas have been given.
Ericsson Spectrum Sharing is part of Ericsson’s 5G platform where 5G enables low latency and faster connections than offered by 4G. In Claro’s case, this means data speeds reaching 400Mbps. This, say the partners, signals massive new opportunities for Brazil, including agriculture, smart cities and healthcare.
With its spectrum sharing solution, Ericsson says that 5G can be activated through a software update on any of the five million 5G-ready radios that it has delivered to the world market since 2015; more than 400,000 of these are in Brazil.
As we noted earlier, this is not auctioned 5G spectrum. Thus, Ericsson says that its dynamic spectrum sharing solution gives Claro a head start in rolling out initial 5G services while waiting for the availability of spectrum in the 3.5GHz and the 26GHz bands.
In addition to these bands, Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency is expected to award frequencies in the 700MHz and 2.3GHz bands during the 5G auction expected to take place in 2021.