10 July 2017, Shenzhen, China – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, announced the company supported China Unicom in the operator’s successful first 5G NR (New Radio) field test.

Deploying ZTE’s pre-commercial 5G base station at sub6GHz with Massive MIMO, LDPC (low-density parity check) and other key 5G technologies, China Unicom achieved data rates of up to 2 gigabits per second for single user-equipment. The 5G NR field test in Shenzhen used the 3.5GHz frequency band with a 100MHz bandwidth, and was conducted by ZTE together with the Guangdong branch of China Unicom, in addition to the operator’s Network Construction department and China Unicom Network Technology Research Institute.

The successful field test aims to verify the 5G technical performance and product commercial capabilities in the actual network environment, highlighting the deepening partnership on 5G network development between China Unicom and ZTE.

In 2016, China Unicom started a 5G laboratory to verify the feasibility of potential key technologies and accelerate the development of 5G base station architecture and platforms. Following the start of 5G field testing in 2017, China Unicom is intensifying efforts on verification, with a goal of pre-commercial 5G network deployment in 2019 and large-scale deployment in 2020.

As a strategic partner of China Unicom, ZTE has played an industry-leading role in 5G technology development and commercialization. With more than 2,000 R&D engineers focused on 5G, ZTE is increasing its investment in the research and development of 5G technologies and is committed to driving faster 5G standardization.

In 2017, ZTE initiated the development of NOMA (non-orthogonal multiple access) technology at 3GPP, a core project for 5G NR. ZTE is continuing to excel in Phase 2 of China’s National 5G tests, successfully completing testing in seven major scenarios and setting multiple new records for network speeds and performance.

ZTE was first to complete the mMTC field test in Phase 2 of China’s National 5G tests, increasing the number of connected terminals by nearly 600 percent, reaching an equivalent density of 10 million connections, marking a major step forward towards the future Internet of Everything (IoE).