TPG Telecom has opened a 5G Innovation Lab in Sydney, which aims to enable vendors to trial their emerging 5G-related technology.
Located in Sydney, the facility comprises an onsite data centre and rooftop mobile site, allowing vendors to partner with TPG to accelerate the adoption of solutions including vRAN, Mobile Edge Computing, mobile private networks and Open RAN, the company said.
Integrated site for 5G trials
The new facility is a first of its kind for TPG Telecom and will provide a single integrated site for vendors to trial their emerging 5G related technologies, the company added. TPG aims to provide a single integrated site to drive product innovation around technology like network virtualisation and emerging 5G applications for industry.
“This is an incredibly exciting new initiative that will allow us to explore end-to-end cloud native 5G infrastructure and unleash the full potential of 5G in driving industry digitisation and automation,” TPG Telecom executive general manager for mobile and fixed networks Barry Kezik said. “Not only will this allow us to evaluate innovations in 5G network infrastructure to deliver better customer experience with lower cost, the real potential here is to unlock 5G’s high throughput and ultra low latency capabilities for industry verticals.
Kezik pointed out that the Innovation Lab will also enable TPG Telecom to benchmark and understand the potential return on investment of different vendor radio technology through on-site trials. “Having the ability to partner and trial different radio technology with different vendors within the Innovation Lab allows for greater ease in benchmarking performance,” he said.
Samsung will be the first vendor partner to utilise the new TPG Telecom Innovation Lab. Globally, there has been a push to adopt open networking standards. Recently, Taiwan has advocated for open and disaggregated connectivity for 5G.