TORONTO – ENCQOR 5G announced today Canada's first publicly accessible mmWave service is now live at Invest Ottawa and will be rolled out to the other ENCQOR 5G sites in Quebec and Ontario (Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City) in the coming weeks.
“Enabled by 5G Non-Standalone NR radio access network and mobile core services provided by Ericsson and a wide-area network enabled by Ciena's coherent optic solutions, the ENCQOR 5G wireless network is capable of mobile throughputs of up to 1.9 Gbps – enough bandwidth to support 90 4K video streams,” says the press release. The new speed and capacity, coupled with significantly reduced latency, will help enable new mobile broadband services to be developed and tested through the ENCQOR 5G program.
“Launching this 5G network for ENCQOR with Ericsson equipment is a massive technological achievement that will allow for ground-breaking innovation and research,” said Graham Osborne, Head of Ericsson Canada, in the release.
“This latest technological development… will help unleash a new realm of possibilities for mobile end-users, both people and machines, to significantly enhance the mobile online experience for both consumer and business applications,” added Steve Alexander, Ciena’s CTO.
If it works as envisioned, 5G will drive technological advancement not seen since the global shift from dial-up to broadband internet, says ENCQOR.
"With this new update to ENCQOR's network, the testbed will now be able to support application testing that requires more throughput and less latency, enabling Canadian innovators to experience directly in our Ontario and Québec sites the benefits of 5G in areas such as smart cities, autonomous vehicles, industry 4.0, multimedia and gaming, smart grid, healthcare and many others,” said Pierre Boucher, general manager, ENCQOR Innovation.
ENCQOR 5G initiative is funded by the governments of Canada, Quebec and Ontario as well as leading industry players Ericsson, Ciena, Thales, CGI and IBM. It is coordinated by Innovation ENCQOR, and delivered in Ontario by Ontario Centers of Excellence and in Quebec by Innovation ENCQOR, CEFRIO and Prompt. The program has a mandate to bring together SMEs and academia to contribute to the advancement of research, innovation and demonstration of applications through a pre-commercial 5G test bed.
