Du, a leading telecom operator in the United Arab Emirates, has demonstrated the first satellite-enabled 5G Mobile Network backhaul in the Middle East using SES medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites. On Monday, both companies announced that the Satellite connectivity delivered by SES accommodated du's 5G backhaul requirements over remote areas of the region.
Live Demonstration of Technology
The live Proof of Concept (POC) saw multiple tests conducted over an SES's O3b satellite, which included voice and data scenarios to measure QoS and stress test load capacity. The main aim of this demo is to showcase SES's current O3b constellation could extend 5G coverage to remote locations that can support du's enterprise customers with high throughput, low latency and highly reliable network connectivity.
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Saleem AlBlooshi, Chief Technology Officer, du, said: "du has vast experience using satellites for its own cellular backhaul, as well as for delivering satellite-enabled data communications services to our enterprise customers, but we need much better throughputs and low-latency performance to support our enterprise, cloud, and data growth applications. O3b mPOWER promises to provide the dedicated multi-gigabit per connection scale with cloud-optimised and low-latency performance to provide the required Quality of Experience (QoE) with the flexibility of satellite."
John-Paul Hemingway, Chief Strategy & Product Officer of SES, said, "We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with du on this demonstration of high-performance MEO services and how we can jointly deploy the Middle East's first satellite-enabled 5G backhaul network. du can leverage more guaranteed-SLA bandwidth, with greater flexibility, via O3b mPOWER to rapidly generate new revenue streams by expanding high-quality 4G/5G to remote areas and by cost effectively connecting its enterprise customers."
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SES Satellite-Enabled 4G Mobile Backhaul
4G Services are available across many places because of the high-throughput satellite systems have provided for mobile backhaul and trunking for terrestrial mobile networks. For example, SES's multi-orbit fleet of geostationary (GEO) and O3b medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites is enabling mobile operators to provide 4G in the remote communities of Eastern Greenland, 4G in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 4G in a city of 500,000 at the edge of the Amazon in Peru and 4G to the mountainous interior of Papua New Guinea. Thus, SES has helped connect the unconnected and contributed to the economic growth and social development in these difficult-to-serve areas.
SES says it has already started deploying O3b mPOWER technology, enabling high-performance services with superior throughput, predictable low latency, and unmatched flexibility to meet data traffic demand. The start of service for O3b mPOWER is expected in 2023.
