Saudi Telecom Company (STC) will deploy Huawei Penta-band Antennas to boost the performance of its convergent TD-LTE and FD-LTE network.
Last week, Reliance Jio Infocomm, a 4G service provider, in India, said it would deploy TD-LTE and FD-LTE network to offer seamless LTE services. Reliance Jio has spectrum in 1800 MHz in 14 circles and 2300 MHz band in 22 circles.
STC, Middle East’s largest operator with 160 million subscribers, decided to deploy Penta-band Antennas since its GSM/UMTS network was unable to meet rapid growth in demands for data services, and has upgraded to a GSM/LTE FDD/LTE TDD network. The company first began deployment in 2012, and now operates the world’s largest TDD/FDD convergent network.
As part of the deal, STC will deploy Huawei Penta-band Antennas in the Saudi Arabian eastern port city of Dammam. After swapping out the network’s original antennas, network test results in Dammam showed that Huawei’s Penta-band Antenna provides a better network performance. In Saudi Arabia alone, STC has 24.8 million subscribers for over 40 percent market share. Huawei does not share specific details of network performance.
In urban areas, deploying additional antennas can be difficult due to load-bearing limits and lack of space on rooftop sites. Huawei Penta-band Antenna simultaneously supports five bands on the 690-960MHz/4×1710-2690MHz spectrum bands in a single compact antenna design.
The antennas support plug-and-play EasyRET (Remote Electronic Tilt), which provides embedded remote control unit (RCU) tilt components to enhance system efficiency and reliability. Different spectrum bands are able to be independently adjusted and optimized to achieve better coverage. A remote automatic identification function also improves maintenance efficiency.
Huawei has shipped more than 1.65 million antennas to more than 360 operators in 155 countries.
