Chunghwa Telecom preps for 5G-Advanced era

With its Chinese peers already having hit the start button on deploying 5G Advanced networks, Taiwanese operator Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) has announced it has selected Nokia to modernise its 5G network across the central and southern regions of the country.

The project aims to boost the performance, capacity and energy efficiency of CHT’s 5G network, laying the foundations for CHT’s 5G-Advanced network evolution. Nokia has had a long-term supplier partnership with CHT that has been in place from the deployment of 2G networks to the 5G era.

As part of a one-year extension, deployment of Nokia technology is underway, and is expected to last 12 months. It will see Nokia upgrade CHT’s network with offerings from its high-performance, energy-efficient 5G AirScale portfolio, including baseband, Massive MIMO radios and remote radio head products.

This includes Nokia’s Massive MIMO Habrok radios in both 32 TRX (Habrok 32) and 64 TRX (Habrok 64) versions to cover all use cases and deployment scenarios. The deal also includes the AirScale Pandion portfolio of FDD multiband remote radio heads.

All of the services are powered by Nokia’s ReefShark System-on-Chip technology, which is claimed to provide superior coverage and capacity to CHT’s customers. Nokia will also provide services, including digital deployment, optimisation and technical support services.

As part of the deal, CHT will also use Nokia’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered MantaRay services portfolio. MantaRay NM will see use in looking to improve network monitoring, management and MantaRay SON, an industry-leading network optimisation and automation platform that uses self-configuring modules to boost network performance and efficiency.

CHT aims to drive what it believes will be “significant” energy savings through Nokia’s advanced RAN software features by introducing innovations such as deep sleep mode, MIMO muting and the MantaRay Energy offering, which is said to help optimise the RAN energy-saving features to reduce radio network power consumption significantly.

CHT will deploy the Nokia 7250 interconnect router to support baseband aggregation and offer what is seen as the necessary scale and performance to cater to its business services’ growing demand and requirements.

CHT vice-president of network technology group Chung-Yung Chia said: “CHT continues to evolve its 5G network to deliver best-in-class connectivity experiences to its customers and maintain our market-leading position in Taiwan. This new, improved deal with our technology partner, Nokia, will prepare our network for the 5G-Advanced era with higher performance, AI-powered intelligence and lower energy consumption.”