The 20-year strategic partnership Ericsson holds with Entel has been extended to help the Chile-based telecom company to evolve towards 5G mobile network.

As part of the new contract, Ericsson will deploy its latest LTE FDD network technologies and LTE TDD Massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) thereby helping Entel to boost competitiveness and gain more revenue streams. Entel will be the first operator in Latin America to deploy Massive MIMO countrywide.

Alfredo Parot, VP of technologies and operations, Entel, said: "Entel has a long-standing partnership with Ericsson that is based on a history of excellence in product and service delivery. Now, as we evolve our network to capture the new business opportunities of Gigabit LTE and the evolution towards 5G and IoT, we naturally extend this partnership with Ericsson in these areas. Our subscribers and enterprise customers will enjoy the benefits of a very high performance network in the region for years to come." 

Arun Bansal, SVP and head of market area Europe and Latin America, Ericsson, said: "With mobile traffic volumes expected to increase exponentially through 2020 and beyond, operators around the world are bolstering their existing networks to deliver higher speeds and lower latency to their subscribers. We write a new chapter in the history of our strategic partnership with Entel by evolving their network to Gigabit LTE and paving the way to 5G and beyond, cementing their leadership position among operators in the Latin American region."

According to the company’s own 5G ‘readiness’ survey, released earlier this month, operators have developed their business strategies for 5G services and are looking at new avenues in the enterprise and industrial segments. Trials are being carried out by more than three quarters of survey respondents.