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The launch of a fixed wireless phone service will bring Optus more months of experience with the 5G compared to its competitors waiting for a purely mobile service, said the president of the company. Optus, Allen Lew.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 in Barcelona on Sunday, Mr. Lew said that the first commercial capability of the 5G is fixed wireless technology, given that the customer equipment is already ready to operate.
"[This] gives us the opportunity to start making our investment immediately, as well as the actual experience of 5G, "Lew said.
The carriers are all doing a lot of planning and testing in the labs, he said, but the current launch will give Optus five months in advance to find out more, according to Lew.
"We need to arrive early and learn the lessons," he said, so that Optus could be "much further down the curve of experience when launching the 5G mobile".
Despite this, Lew said Optus was still working with Oppo and Samsung, for example, on the 5G mobile phone – including announcing a 5G call with Singtel and Oppo last week.
Fixed wireless technology will also provide monetization to telecom operators much sooner than business use cases, he said.
"The new mobile use case is FW," Lew said.
At the MWC, Optus announced that it would use Nokia's FastMile 5G indoor gateway for what it claims to be the world's first 3GPP-based 5G fixed wireless commercial service.
However, Lew revealed to ZDNet that the Nokia device could not be used crosswise on its Ericsson 5G zones until June / July due to changing standards.
According to Lew, Optus therefore uses an Inseego 5G CPE for the Ericsson zones, customers residing in these regions having to wait "a little longer" than those in the 5G areas served by Nokia because "we are working more on Nokia's first service".
For the first 100 Optus 5G towers, Nokia builds 50, while Ericsson builds 50. The remaining 1,100 towers of the initial build remain to be determined.
Earlier this month, Optus turned on its fifth 5G mobile tower and plans to install 1,200 5G mobile sites in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Western Australia by March 2020.
The 5G Home Broadband service on Optus will cost AU $ 70 per month for unlimited data with a minimum speed guarantee of 50 Mbps. It is expected to provide connectivity by the second quarter of 2019.
Lew said Sunday that Optus had already aroused the interest of a few hundred people and that the Nokia FastMile device was tested and used by them.
Another advantage of Optus over its competitors is that it can leverage the expertise and experience of the Singtel Group, said Mr. Lew, including TrustWave.
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