ZTE and the Hunan branch of China Telecom have launched China’s first commercial 5G Standalone site to support Massive MIMO 1+X SSB (synchronization signal and PBCH block), with three-dimensional coverage. This combination of technologies will improve coverage and capacity, especially at the cell edge, in the 3.5 GHz spectrum, and that has a positive effect on network costs, says the vendor. In particular, this technology will help with ‘vertical coverage’ for high buildings in dense cities. The 5G 1+X SSB solution introduced by ZTE supports wide beams with power boosting (1) to provide better basic coverage than the traditional seven-beam MIMO configurations. X; and on-demand configuration (X), to improve vertical and 3D coverage. The 5G 1+X SSB site was built…