Telecom Egypt released a barrage of announcements at Mobile World Congress this week covering two 5G partnerships, Africa’s first 1.2 Tbps fibre connection and a 50G PON trial.
Telecom Egypt and Huawei said they have formed a strategic partnership to deploy 5G network. Under the partnership, Huawei will offer its latest network solutions including 5G wireless, 5G service-oriented core and 5G-ready transport network.
Huawei said it has collaborated with Telecom Egypt to established 5G sites in hotspot areas across Egypt.
Meanwhile, Telecom Egypt also announced with Ericsson that they have successfully trialled 5G across several key locations in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital using 2.6 GHz spectrum.
For that trial, Ericsson deployed a 5G non-standalone (NSA) solution using 4G/5G radios from the Ericsson Radio System connected to Ericsson’s Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and Unified Data Management (UDM).
On the fibre network front, Telecom Egypt also said it successfully collaborated with Huawei to complete the trial of what they claim is Africa's first 1.2-Tbps single channel DWDM connection.
The 1.2-Tbps channel uses Huawei’s concentrated wavelength division optical fibre technology, which Huawei says increases the bandwidth of existing fibre networks.
The 1.2Tbps coherent solution – which will be utilized in Telecom Egypt's live network “soon” – will deliver the transmission reach, spectral efficiency, latency, and system energy consumption to support the telco’s 5G network, Huawei said. The technology can also support applications such as metro, short-haul, and data center interconnect (DCI) on a single wavelength.
Telecom Egypt and Huawei also announced that they have completed what they’re billing as the first 50G PON trial in Africa.
The test results demonstrated that the upload and download rate of Huawei’s 50G PON prototype meet the standard requirements. The test also verified the capability of managing 50G PON ONTs and supporting the G/10G 50PON combo function.
The test also verified that 50G PON is compatible with Telecom Egypt’s existing fibre optic network, and works seamlessly with the optical distribution network (ODN) on optical devices, paving the way for future development. Huawei said the technology will enable Telecom Egypt’s broadband offerings to support UHD video, virtual and augmented reality and industrial digitization.