Huawei's Sub-1GHz Massive MIMO First Global Commercial Use
Huawei and Nigerian operator MTN have jointly launched the world's first commercial Sub-1GHz Massive MIMO site. Nigeria, as Africa's most populous country, has seen its local low-frequency 4G network capabilities significantly enhanced through this collaboration.
Currently, 4G usage in Nigeria is increasing, with short videos, live streaming, and mobile payment services becoming very popular, leading to a rapid increase in network traffic. Low-frequency spectrum is limited, causing network congestion and a poor user experience.
The newly launched solution offers significant improvements over traditional 4T4R sites. After activation, low-frequency LTE traffic increased by 104%, user downlink speeds improved by 28%, and network resource utilization decreased by 8%.
This technology applies massive antenna and broadband technologies to the low-frequency band, enabling the integration of fragmented spectrum for significantly improved efficiency. It also supports compatibility with 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and IoT signals, making future 5G upgrades easier.
Huawei addressed the long-standing issues of large size, heavy weight, and commercial unfeasibility of low-frequency large antennas through improvements in materials, architecture, and algorithms, completing the final piece of the puzzle for full-frequency Massive MIMO.
Combined with previously deployed medium and high-frequency equipment, MTN now achieves Massive MIMO coverage across all frequency bands, becoming the first operator globally to do so and officially entering the era of full-frequency large antenna technology.
Nigeria MTN Sub-1GHz Massive MIMO commercial site.