Singtel will tie up with Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE to deploy Massive MIMO technology, a precursor to 5G technology, at the Marina Bay area, to offer 200 percent increase in mobile data speed at special events.

Singtel will deploy Massive MIMO technology commercially on its LTE-Advanced mobile network to enhance mobile data speed experience. The investment in Massive MIMO is expected to enhance Singtel’s mobile network capacity in highly dense environments.

Singtel will roll out the network capacity enhance solution at the National Day celebrations. Singtel will also deploy Massive MIMO at the Singapore F1 Night Race and the New Year countdown event. Over 150,000 people are expected at the Marina Bay area to celebrate National Day next week.

“Singtel will be pairing our newly-acquired 2.5GHz spectrum with Massive MIMO technology to expand our network capacity and offer our customers an enhanced mobile experience at this and other special events,” said Mark Chong, group chief technology officer of Singtel.

Singtel has identified Massive MIMO as one of the solutions to the data network congestions during big events. Singtel will use Massive MIMO base stations featuring a large array of 64 antennas that improve spectral efficiency and cell capacity using innovations in radio technologies.

The innovative antenna system channels signals to users’ specific locations instead of broadcasting across a geographical area. This multiplies the number of data paths from the cellular base stations, thus increasing network capacity and improving user experience.