October 23, 2019 – Through the latest network upgrade, ENCQOR 5G is proud to announce a truly revolutionary accomplishment. Canada’s first publicly accessible 5G mmWave service is now live at Invest Ottawa, and will be rolled out to the other ENCQOR 5G sites in Quebec and Ontario in the coming weeks.
“Our government is pleased to be a partner in providing opportunities for companies to develop technological advances to improve mobile broadband function and access,” said Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade Vic Fedeli. “We are committed to a five-year, $315 million plan to expand broadband and cellular service across Ontario.”
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. These blazing fast mobile throughputs, coupled with significantly reduced latencies, will enable a breadth of new enhanced mobile broadband services to be envisioned, developed and tested through the ENCQOR 5G Program.
“Ericsson is leading the way to bring 5G to Canada, and our work with ENCQOR is a critical part of that evolution,” said Graham Osborne, Head of Ericsson Canada. “Launching this 5G network for ENCQOR with Ericsson equipment is a massive technological achievement that will allow for ground-breaking innovation and research.”
“Fast, reliable, and agile connectivity are what we expect from our mobile broadband experience,” said Steve Alexander, Chief Technology Officer, Ciena. “This latest technological development spearheaded by ENCQOR 5G 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 – anywhere, anytime, all the time.”
5G capabilities are responsible for the largest technological advancement since the global shift from dial-up to broadband internet. Disruptive applications enabled by this technology will fundamentally change the way in which services are delivered, revolutionize how we interact with the world around us and by doing so create enormous opportunities while threatening soon to be outdated business models.
“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.
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About ENCQOR 5G
The 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. ENCQOR 5G 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.
Media Contact for Quebec:
Maxime-R. Clerk
Senior Director, Partnerships and Communications
mclerk@promptinnov.com
514-679-9477
Media Contact for Ontario:
Kimberly Quines
Communications and Digital Media Coordinator
Kimberly.quines@oce-ontario.org
416-861-1092 x1101