Most of the considerable interest in dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) has centered on the USA, where Verizon and AT&T plan to activate the technology this year, at least in the base stations they have sourced from Ericsson.
But the USA and Ericsson are not the whole story. The US operators are particularly keen on DSS because they have very limited supplies of midband spectrum for 5G and have been forced to support high capacity requirements with the more challenging millimeter wave bands. With DSS, they can use a 4G band, such as 1.7 GHz, for both 4G and 5G, on a flexible basis.
In fact, though, some European operators, such as VodafoneZiggo in The Netherlands and Sunrise in Switzerland, will beat the US giants in commercial roll-out of DSS. And although Ericsson is the acknowledged frontrunner in supporting this standards-based, but demanding application (which requires extremely high performance baseband acceleration), Nokia has emerged as the partner for another Vodafone subsidiary, in India.
Indian operators are more spectrum-starved than their US counterparts and do not have any 5G-specific airwaves yet – auctions in 3.5 GHz have been postponed, officially because of the pandemic but also because the operators had threatened to boycott them, pleading that they could not yet afford new licences, burdened as they are with debt, price wars and the imposition of huge backdated revenue recognition fines.
So DSS may be a way to start deploying 5G before they have new spectrum. Nokia sais it has completed the first phase of a dynamic spectrum refarming (DSR) project for Vodafone Idea, the Indian market leader, and that this is the world’s largest. The two firms have also deployed India’s biggest Massive MIMO installation to date.
Nokia’s DSR solution includes a module for its AirScale baseband product, which enables the operator to support automated DSS.
Vodafone Idea’s CTO, Vishant Vora, said: “Dynamic spectrum refarming provides us with more network capacity and data speed to enable us to deliver best-in-class network experience to our subscribers. Vodafone Idea was the first one to trial the DSR and I thank Nokia for the close partnership.”
Nokia is providing SingleRAN equipment in many of Vodafone’s operating circles and has now supplied more than 5,500 TD-LTE Massive MIMO units in the 2.5 GHz band, in eight circles.
“We have the largest deployment of mMIMO in India and our investment in mMIMO technology significantly helped us in meeting the growing data demand during the Covid-19 crisis,” added Vora. “At Vodafone Idea, innovation is the cornerstone for creating a 4G+ network and this is an example of us adopting cutting edge technology to create a better network.”