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StarHub's HetNet dishes out 300Mbps 4G speeds in Marina Bay area

By James Lu - on 8 Oct 2015, 4:02pm

StarHub's HetNet dishes out 300Mbps 4G speeds in Marina Bay area

StarHub HetNet small cells atop a building along the Singapore River.

After successful testing at two major events, SG50 Jubilee and the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix, StarHub is now rolling out its 4G LTE-Advanced heterogeneous network (HetNet) on a permanent basis with over 100 macro base stations and small cells providing up to 300Mbps service for customers within and around The Esplanade, The Float@Marina Bay, The Fullerton Heritage, The Padang and War Memorial Park areas. The service is already available at The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands.

Compared to a traditional mobile network, which relies on a handful of high-powered macro base stations designed to cover several kilometres in radius each, StarHub's HetNet, which won an award for Best Innovation in Heterogeneous Networks at the LTE Asia Awards earlier this year, utilizes a mix of macro base stations and small cells to provide a mosaic of mobile coverage and seamless handover capability between the different wireless access technologies within an operator’s network. HetNets are mainly deployed to optimize the quality of mobile experience at crowded sites, hard-to-reach areas or special events.

As StarHub explained, "Compact in size and low in power consumption, small cells typically cover a couple hundred metres each and are installed on physical structures, such as ceilings, pillars and lampposts. This makes small cells ideal for filling mobile coverage gaps left by their bigger siblings and enhancing capacity of a mobile network without additional wireless spectrum use. Small cells is an important technology in successful HetNet deployments. In contrast, rolling out and operating a pure small cells network is a complex operation, that may cost up to eight times more than a classical mobile network. Therefore, small cells alone are not used to provide nationwide mobile coverage cost-effectively."

As the fastest 4G network in the world, StarHub remains committed to providing our customers with the best possible mobile service experience,” said Mock Pak Lum, Chief Technology Officer, StarHub. “With small cells as a cost-effective means of boosting network capacity and speeds, we plan to deploy more HetNets with the help of our infrastructure partners Huawei and Nokia Networks, to ensure mobile service quality for our customers and to catalyse Singapore’s Smart Nation innovations.”

StarHub says it will continue to expand its HetNet to cover Marina Bay Sands, Marina Bay City Gallery and The Promontory@Marina Bay. By the end of next year, some 40 commercial buildings, hospitals and malls, including nex, Jem, and KK Women's and Children's Hospital, will progressively get this network upgrade. In addition, StarHub will test the seamless integration of enterprise-grade Wi-Fi with macro and small cell technologies in the IDA HetNet trial circuit at Jurong Lake District.

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