Singtel today said it deployed the 5G standalone (SA) trial network at its 5G Garage testing facility in Singapore.
The network, which utilizes 3.5GHz spectrum and Ericsson’s Massive MIMO (Multiple-input multiple-output) technology, provides enterprises with early access to 5G to develop and trial 5G solutions.
Singtel earlier unveiled 5G use case with 24/7 unmanned pop-up retail store in September. “Our 5G SA trial network offers enterprises from across industries the opportunity to develop and test applications to accelerate automation and digitalization,” Bill Chang, chief executive officer of Group Enterprise at Singtel said.
Ubitus, cloud gaming provider, will be the first enterprise to use Singtel’s 5G SA network for a 5G cloud gaming trial. The trial conducted on Singtel’s multi-access edge computing (MEC) platform demonstrated a 5G cloud gaming experience that consistently delivered 85 percent lower latency of between 8 to 11 milliseconds compared to cloud gaming on 4G.
“We are very excited with the potential of Singtel’s 5G SA and MEC to push the envelope on cloud gaming. The trials will inform our designs for exciting games which will test gamers’ reflexes and instincts,” said Wesley Kuo, chief executive officer of Ubitus.
5G and MEC’s ability to integrate with technologies such as Internet of Things, analytics, robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented, virtual or mixed reality enables enterprises to leverage the low latency in applications requiring little or no lag times.
These include remote surgery, smart manufacturing, autonomous driving, remote robotic repair and maintenance and virtual reality enabled live concerts.
By removing the need for data to be sent all the way to public clouds to be processed and sent back, MEC is able to better serve mission critical data connectivity. It also enables enterprises to optimize their cost of ownership for hosting, dedicated link provisioning and data transfer.
Singtel has developed ten 5G use cases together with more than 20 start-ups and enterprises in areas such as robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and drones. Singtel has also collaborated with PSA to trial maritime 5G use cases to optimize port operations at the future Tuas Port.
