04 July 2017

Bluewater shopping centre is said to attract 27 million vistors every year.

Arqiva has acquired an additional 28GHz spectrum licence from managed services provider Luminet.

And in a separate deal, the communications infrastructure company has partnered with the owners of the Bluewater shopping centre to deliver indoor 4G connectivity.

Arqiva’s new Region A licence for 2 x 112MHz covers central and Greater London. Sasha Williamson, CEO of Luminet, says: “Divesting the spectrum was a strategic business decision as we continue to build on our existing 400 square kilometre London network and enhance our focus on wholesale for our intelligent GB connectivity and computing services.”

28GHz offers promise for future 5G implementations in the UK, and is the standard spectrum band used for 5G trials in the USA, Japan and South Korea focused on fixed wireless access (FWA).

According to Arqiva, the next key milestone in 5G deployment will be March 2018 when the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) completes Release 15. This will be the first standardisation of 5G, paving the way for FWA to be the first commercial release of 5G technology.

Nicolas Ott, the company’s MD of telecoms and M2M, says: “5G FWA is an exciting opportunity to deliver true ultrafast broadband above 500Mbps to millions of households; this is especially relevant in the UK where so few households are connected by FTTH or FTTC. FWA has the ability to become a truly alternative technology to deliver fibre-like services.” 

Arqiva expects to conduct the UK’s first 5G FWA field trial in partnership with Samsung in London this summer. Using the 28GHz band, the trial will explore the possibilities of ultra-fast, high bandwidth connectivity via wireless technology rather than conventional wired services (News, p1, March 2017 issue).

Meanwhile, retailers and shoppers look set to benefit from enhanced mobile coverage and capacity thanks to new 4G in-building infrastructure at the Bluewater shopping mall in Kent.

As part of its ongoing 15-year agreement with Landsec – the owner of the shopping centre and said to be the UK’s largest commercial real estate company – Arqiva will replace Bluewater’s existing mobile coverage systems with a new 2G/3G/4G, five-band in-building system. This will support services from all of the country’s mobile networks operators.

Using a distributed antenna system (DAS), Arqiva plans to extend mobile coverage into Bluewater’s anchor stores and connect 11 remote unit locations throughout the site.

The system will comprise active RF-over-fibre master units installed in a new common equipment room, with fibre feeding the multiple remote units. These will then be connected to antennas with coaxial cable.

Arqiva says the system will support  2G, 3G and 4G services from all of the country’s mobile networks operators, as well as all five bands they utilise – 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2.1GHz and 2.6GHz.

Installation work is due to begin later in the summer.