PARTNER CONTENT: Telecoms operator du inaugurated its 5G-Advanced (5G-A) Innovation Centre in Dubai to advance development of the technology to boost network performance, as it drives digital transformation in the UAE region.
The centre aims to expand the large-scale commercial use of 5G-A across various sectors including consumer home and enterprise, positioning it as a global benchmark for 5G-A networks. The project will explore new commercial applications and business models, driving the potential of 5G-A.
At the launch, du noted its customer-centric approach “drives us to deliver unparalleled user experiences”, adding it will tap the advanced capabilities of 5G-A to introduce innovative applications that meet the diverse needs of consumers, households and enterprises, “accelerating the UAE’s digital transformation and ushering in a new era of intelligent, connected, AI-powered mobility”.
The innovation centre builds on previous achievements, such as du’s 5G-A launch at the SAMENA Summit in Dubai in May, where the UAE also announced its ambitious 5G-A development plan, using more spectrum (3CC), delivering speeds up to 5Gb/s and expanding the scale of the deployment nationwide.
The innovation facility is located at du’s headquarters and is designed to showcase the commercial applications of 5G-A, highlighting its business potential. It will focus on integrating 5G-A with AI to enhance experiences like fixed wireless access (FWA), immersive XR services and business-to-business applications.
For consumers, the 5G-A centre will bring improvements in live-streaming, low-latency gaming and remote work services. The home segment will benefit from gigabit-level speeds for smoother video streaming and online gaming. In the enterprise domain, enhanced speeds, reliability and reduced latency will support smart manufacturing, remote collaboration and digital transformation.
Upgrade features
Compared with 5G, 5G-A features significantly higher data rates, delivering peak download speeds of up to 10Gb/s and average speeds of 5Gb/s, and lowers latency to 1ms end-to-end, with 99.9999% reliability. The technology also will expand IoT technologies and applications to make them more lightweight and ubiquitous. Reduced capability (RedCap) devices, for example, support medium-speed low-latency IoT.
The upgrade to 5G-A increases the ability to monetise enterprise and consumer applications by introducing low-power IoT with RedCap, FWA broadband, and a range of higher bandwidth streaming and entertainment categories that can tap extended reality (XR).
Globally, more than ten operators have launched commercial plans for 5.5G, and 30 app vendors have conducted related technical verifications.
While the RAN dominates operator capex, most of the incremental value in the 5G-A era will be delivered by core network enhancements, a research note from GSMA Intelligence highlighted. They include performance improvements to address new traffic and use cases including interactive or immersive services, greater core network deployment distribution to support traffic and use case requirements, and deterministic performance and embedded intelligence to manage emerging services.
While the use cases and technologies operators are prioritising tell a complex story, 5G-A being a trigger for API exposure suggests operators see an opportunity to link its capabilities to monetise services, a GSMA Intelligence survey found.
The poll showed improved uplink performance was the most important 5G-A feature. In terms of use cases, 5G multicast services ranked top for supporting operators’ network transformation priorities by a large margin. Low-cost IoT support ranked second.
AI innovations
du is a leader in 5G coverage in the UAE, with plans to deploy thousands of 5G-A base stations, promising speeds of up to 5Gb/s. The initiative supports Dubai’s core commercial areas and nationwide expansion, and is expected to accelerate the UAE’s digital transformation with innovative, AI-powered services.
Nearly 41 per cent of its 8.3 million mobile subscribers are on 5G plans after the operator added about 300,000 users in Q3. It. Its 5G coverage reaches 98.5 per cent of the population.
In July, the UAE operator conducted a trial designed to boost 5G-A uplink using three transmitter antennas and two component carrier (2CC) aggregation across LTE frequency bands on its existing infrastructure, claiming “significant advancements” in speeds.
It aims to create the high-quality and leading 5G-A network by the end of the year, using TDD 3CC and 300MHz of commercial TDD spectrum. This upgrade from 2CC to 3CC is expected to greatly improve network performance based on real-world tests.
With the upgraded network, du plans to enhance the user experiences and explore AI applications to stay at the forefront of AI and 5G-A integration.
The operator is committed to maintaining its leadership in 5G-A network deployment, ensuring world-class services and experiences, and continuing to innovate in the 5G-A era.