UScellular, Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Inseego address digital divide with multi-gigabit extended-range 5G milestone over mmWave

SAN DIEGO:

What’s New: UScellular, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Ericsson and Inseego today announced the companies have successfully achieved a 5G extended-range milestone over millimeter Wave (mmWave) on a commercial network. This milestone was accomplished at a distance of 7 km, the farthest 5G mmWave Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) connection in the United States, with sustained average downlink speeds of ~1 Gbps, sustained average uplink speeds of ~55 Mbps and instantaneous peak downlink speeds recorded at greater than 2 Gbps[i].

Additionally, at a distance of 1.75 km with no line of sight, the companies achieved sustained average downlink speeds of ~730 Mbps and sustained average uplink speeds of ~38 Mbps. These results were achieved in Janesville, Wis., on UScellular’s commercial network by applying Ericsson’s extended-range functionality to Ericsson commercial hardware Antenna Integrated Radio (AIR) 5322 advanced antenna system, along with an Inseego Wavemaker™ 5G outdoor CPE FW2010 powered by the Qualcomm® 5G Fixed Wireless Access Platform gen 1 featuring Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X55 5G Modem-RF System and a Qualcomm® QTM527 mmWave antenna module. The achievement demonstrates the impressive range and connectivity speeds 5G mmWave can provide to homes and businesses everywhere.

Why It’s Important: With its massive capacity, in particular achieving gigabit speeds over this long range, 5G mmWave is a robust and crucial solution to meet the increasing traffic demand and expand broadband services to help bridge the digital divide throughout rural, suburban, and urban communities. 5G mmWave will enable new business opportunities in FWA by providing a cost-effective way for communication service providers to deliver high internet speeds. 5G FWA will address the “last mile” connectivity challenges by allowing operators and OEMs to deploy 5G connectivity to homes and institutions such as schools, libraries, hospitals, and other health care facilities. FWA provides the bandwidth required to support high-definition video streaming that can improve remote education and healthcare experiences in suburban and rural environments.

“We believe that every household and business deserve access to reliable Internet access no matter where they are located, and the results we achieved in this latest mmWave test further confirm that wireless technology is key to providing high-speed broadband service in both urban and rural areas,” said Mike Irizarry, executive vice president and chief technology officer, UScellular. “By collaborating with companies like Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies and Inseego, we will continue to drive innovation with extended-range technology to ensure that wireless customers across rural America have an exceptional wireless experience designed for their communities.”

“We are pleased of our collaboration with UScellular, Ericsson and Inseego as this milestone continues to highlight the growing momentum we’re seeing across the industry to bridge the digital divide. Our innovations in 5G FWA will help operators and OEMs offer flexible and cost effective, low-latency, extended range, multi-gigabit 5G broadband to their customers,” said Manish Tripathi, vice president, engineering, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “The Qualcomm 5G Fixed Wireless Access Platform gen 1 was designed to deliver the first fully integrated extended-range mmWave solution to deploy 5G connectivity to homes, small businesses, schools, hospitals and town halls.”

“We have long been pushing the boundaries of 5G technology, and this collaboration with UScellular, Inseego, and Qualcomm Technologies continues to demonstrate our successful track record in extending coverage with our industry-leading 5G mmWave hardware and software solutions optimized for FWA,” said Per Narvinger, head of product area networks, Ericsson. “Today, technology plays a critical role in our lives, and we’re thrilled to provide our advanced technology and networking expertise to help address the last mile of connectivity across the U.S.”

“This is an exciting, high-performance product within our growing portfolio of 5G fixed wireless access solutions,” said Ashish Sharma, president of IoT and mobile solutions, Inseego. “We’re delivering exceptionally high throughput at a very long distance with millimeter wave technology. In addition to bringing 5G to enterprise and home broadband customers almost anywhere, we see a great market with the FW2010 for infrastructure backhaul applications. This is truly a game-changer for the FWA market.”