M1 and Huawei announced plans to jointly showcase innovative 5G use cases in Singapore, starting with the live demonstration of 360-view Virtual Reality (VR) content broadcast by end of June this year.
The demonstration is Singapore’s first end-to-end 5G live trial using Huawei’s 5G equipment operating at the 28GHz millimetre wave (mmWave) frequency band, according to a press release on June 12.
It will be done using 5G equipment setup at M1’s MiWorld building in Jurong,
In the recent years, creative content and exciting new applications have been developed using immersive technologies and media such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). They have been used for purposes such as training, education, corporate communication, marketing campaigns, public events and virtual tourism.
These content and applications are extremely bandwidth-intensive and delay-sensitive. This makes them costly and technically challenging to stream or broadcast to a large number of users over existing cellular networks.
With the advent of 5G technology, one future use case is in the future smart classroom. For example, teachers could use the 5G network to share a 360-view AR/VR/MR video to a classroom of students. This will capture their curiosity and imagination, aid information assimilation and retention, as well as make learning more interactive and interesting.
“This live demo is a small but significant step in our journey towards next generation 5G mobile networks. With the advancement in 5G and media technologies, immersive communication experience will continue to be enhanced and this will definitely have a profound impact on the way we work, learn, live and play in future Smart City,” said Mr Denis Seek, Chief Technical Officer, M1.
“M1 is committed to staying at the forefront of 5G technology to ensure our consumers enjoy the best experience and latest smart applications. We look forward to working closely with Huawei to harness 5G for developing new innovative and demand-driven use cases and applications in Singapore,” he added.
Mr Lei Hui, CEO of Huawei International said, “We are pleased to partner with M1 on the 5G journey. With customer-centric innovation in mind, Huawei will continue to push the technology envelope jointly with our customer to deliver best-in-class advanced wireless solutions."