Rogers Communications announced the selection of Ericsson for the deployment of 5G network in Canada.
Nokia, Huawei, Samsung and ZTE are the other leading 5G equipment makers in the fray for 5G equipment deals. A press release from Rogers indicates that Ericsson is the 5G market leader in North America.

“5G will make the mass communication of IoT a reality, changing how we live and work,” said Jorge Fernandes, chief technology officer of Rogers Communications. “We’re setting the table to lead on 5G with the right infrastructure, spectrum, partners and investments.”

Rogers and Ericsson demonstrated live 5G examples — as part of Rogers’ 5G testing program — at the Rogers Centre. Participants wore virtual reality (VR) glasses to toss a baseball back and forth, virtually shopped in a retail store, and controlled robots with real-time responsiveness.

Rogers also demonstrated Quad-band Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) on Gigabit LTE to show how LAA provides high bandwidth, simultaneously across several devices.

“We estimate that there will be one billion 5G subscriptions worldwide by the end of 2023,” Niklas Heuveldop, head of Market Area North America, Ericsson, said.

Rogers plans to rollout its Gigabit LTE network with technology and equipment that is based on the latest global 3GPP standards, including 4×4 MIMO, four-carrier aggregation and 256 QAM.

The company will boost and densify its network with small cells and macro sites across the country. Working with Ericsson, Rogers will trial 5G in Toronto and Ottawa, in addition to select cities over the next year.