Saudi Telecom Company (STC) will conduct trial of Huawei’s Penta-band Antennas to boost the performance of the operator’s convergent LTE TDD and LTE FDD network.
 
STC is the Middle East’s largest operator with 160 million subscribers. In Saudi Arabia alone, STC has 24.8 million subscribers for over 40% market share.
 
STC chose to do trial of Penta-band Antennas since its GSM/UMTS network was unable to meet rapid growth in demands for data services, and has upgraded to a GSM/LTE FDD/LTE TDD network. The company first began deployment in 2012, and now operates the world’s largest TDD/FDD convergent network.
 
Huawei Penta-band Antennas will be on trial in the Saudi Arabian eastern port city of Dammam, which is the largest city in the country’s eastern region and the largest seaport in the Persian Gulf. After swapping out the network’s original antennas, network test results in Dammam showed that Huawei’s Penta-band Antenna provides a better network performance.
 
In urban areas, conducting trials with additional antennas can be difficult due to load-bearing limits and lack of space on rooftop sites. Huawei Penta-band Antenna simultaneously supports five bands on the 690-960MHz/4×1710-2690MHz spectrum bands in a single compact antenna design.
 
The antennas support plug-and-play EasyRET (Remote Electronic Tilt), which provides embedded remote control unit (RCU) tilt components to enhance system efficiency and reliability. Different spectrum bands are able to be independently adjusted and optimized to achieve the best coverage. A remote automatic identification function also improves maintenance efficiency.

To date, Huawei has shipped more than 1.65 million antennas to more than 360 operators in 155 countries. Huawei is committed to providing advanced antenna systems to global operators that enable an enhanced network performance and better user experience.